


Danger Days

by MirrorsInHerEyes (Tempest_InA_Teacup)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Western, American!Erwin Smith, Angry Sex, Bounty hunter!Erwin, Campfires, Drifting, Erwin is a manipulative bastard, Frotting, German!Levi Ackerman, Hunting, Late 19th-early 20th century, Levi is a piece of shit, M/M, Shotgunning, Slow Burn, Snk MiniBang, and a slowly budding relationship, but also fluffy sex, but is also the sweetest Cinnabon deep down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:31:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7932988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempest_InA_Teacup/pseuds/MirrorsInHerEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi, a young German immigrant, retaliates against his cruel employer by stealing a very valuable item, and sets out on a journey through the desert in hopes of making it home alive. When he unwittingly attracts the attention of one mysterious and unusually quiet outlaw by the name of Erwin Smith, who offers to cross him the desert for a quarter of what his wanted poster is offering, Levi has to keep his eyes peeled and his mind on edge if he doesn't want to end up getting shot, hanged, or worse.</p>
<p>This proves to be much easier said than done when you're miles away from civilization, start forming unexpected bonds with your desert guide, and have a gang of bounty hunters hot on your heels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One last contribution to the Snk fandom, and part of the awesome Snk Minibang 2016, we present you with the totally not self indulgent Eruri Slow West Au! (Pleasewatchthemovieplsthank). And also because we didn't see too many Eruri cowboy AUs around and decided to write our own teehee? Expect scorching heat, horses, hunting, frustrated Levi because THERE IS DUST IN THE DESERT?! And lots of Erwin just being done with it all. Oh, and also Eruri sexual tension, because why the fuck not?
> 
> This was an amazing event that allowed us to work with three incredibly talented artists, and it was an absolute blast! So thanks so much for the mods that spent so much time and effort organizing such a brilliant event and bringing writers and artists together. It obviously wasn't easy, and you guys rock for sticking through with the event till the very end!
> 
> Check out the rad as hell art at the following links (I'll be updating the links as each artist posts theirs. Probably within the next day or two :D) : 
> 
> \- [Beautiful Art of an upcoming scene by Acrknowyou](https://acrknowyou.tumblr.com/post/149812055866/drawing-made-for-the-snkminibang-make-sure-you)  
> \- [Fucking Amazing art by Sayloni for an upcoming hunting scene I cry](https://sayloni.tumblr.com/post/150093821233/i-got-to-work-with-some-amazing-writers-for-the)  
> \- [Proferivai who is the most adorable cinnabon in the world, and we're sooo excited to see her awesome art!](http://proferivai.tumblr.com/)  
> Also, huuuuuuuuge thank you to [Ravenreux](http://ravenreux.tumblr.com) , who is the sweetest beta one could ever ask for. We're so incredibly lucky to have you working on this story! Check out her work at [Ravenreux](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreux)

Levi’s ears perked up, neck stiff and fingers sparking with frozen blood. The sound ripped through the air like a roar, deep and heavy and loud. It left his ears ringing and his eyes bubbling with fear.

Gunshots; fired so close by he could taste the lead in his mouth.

“Scheiße,” He breathed.

The rope he’d used to secure his belongings to the horse was slipping between his sweaty palms, the knots seemingly impossible to untangle with tremor wracked fingers.

He shouldn’t have taken so many things along to begin with. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Lord only knew how long he’d be out in the open before he reached George Town, and he couldn’t risk stopping by a market lest they already had his face pinned to its bulletin board. Thus leading to his grabbing a horse and whatever supplies he’d found in the pantry of Clinton Bennett’s farmhouse, whatever he could carry in his two hands and tattered leather cases, and fled like he’d never fled before. There hadn’t really been any time to think that maybe horses couldn’t support both his weight and that of bacon, bread, and whatever the hell was in the cans that filled each bag.

There sure wasn’t any time to regret it right now.

Levi cursed under his breath, dropping the ropes when he realized his hands were of no use to these knots in their condition. He crouched down to his boot to fumble for the knife he’d stuck in the strap around its side, dry leaves crunching under him. His horse nickered, shifting by his side as Levi struggled to pull the damned blade out. Not much use in that either. It seemed to be stuck in its holder, its handle slipping from his fingers time and time again.

“Verdammt!“ Levi hissed.

He came so close to ripping his boot off altogether when his blood prickled again at another sound coming from the trees around him. It wasn’t gunshots again. Far worse. It was leaves, crisp and dry and burnt, crumbling under a pair of boots that didn’t belong to him. It made Levi’s throat pulse; made his jaw ache and his mouth dry.

His fingers uncurled from the knife’s handle, and he looked up ahead, squinting. The branches and leaves of sunburnt trees intertwined like the fingers of sinister hands over his eyes, clouding his vision so all he had to rely on was the increasingly approaching sound of footsteps heading his way. His hand darted to his horse’s reins when it blowed and shook its head. The last thing he needed was to end up stranded here without food or transport.

As the sound grew louder, and louder still, Levi’s free hand reached into his jacket for his revolver, fingers tightening around its grip. He was nowhere near sure he would even know how to use it should the need arise, having never really had the need to before. Perhaps he wouldn’t even have to. For all whoever this was knew, Levi could be a trained assassin. Yet, as convincing as the thought was, it still didn’t stop the quiver in his knees as he raised himself to his feet, pulling the gun free of his jacket and aiming it at nowhere in particular in front of him.

He couldn’t decide what bothered him more, the silence or the constant crunch, crunch, crunch that broke it.  
  
“Beruhige dich,” Levi whispered to the animal as he tightened his hand around its reins, “Beruhige dich bitte.”  
  
Did American horses even understand German? Levi felt like kicking himself.

Then the heavy steps came to an abrupt halt. From a clump of dried vegetation, Levi spotted a fairly tall man approaching, with his face covered by the rim of a tattered cowboy hat. His whole appearance was rugged, from his worn denim jeans, fastened with a thick leather strap that made for a gun holder, to the long leather trench coat he was wearing over a dirty blue shirt.

Levi could never understand how and why Americans liked to overdress in the scorching heat, the extra amount of clothing leading to nothing but heavy sweating and a stench of burnt skin.

Absolutely disgusting.

The stranger stood there motionless, bluish smoke making its way from under the cowboy hat and lifting in the dry air. It felt like solid minutes had passed before the man even looked up at him, revealing a sunburnt face, covered with blonde stubble. He wore a hard expression, with brash blue eyes surrounded by crow’s feet and thick eyebrows emphasizing his rough features.

He didn’t look friendly, Levi thought, nor did he seem to have come Levi’s way with good intentions.

What struck Levi the most, however, was the fellow’s lack of reaction to a gun pointed at him. He could have been scared out of his mind, but Levi knew better than to show any sign of nervousness, like itchy fingers or a restless leg, the slightest tremble in his muscles. No way in hell would he allow himself to look feeble, not when he was caught in a windmill of violence, travelling through No Man’s Land, where men succumbed to brutality and became vultures.  
  
The entire situation could have been almost amusing, if there was anyone to give their opinion from the sides. Levi, keeping an old revolver aimed at the man, and the unknown traveler, regarding him with a mixture of boredom and annoyance on his face. Like Levi was wasting his time with child’s play.

Neither of them dared move a muscle until the stranger finally spoke with a gravelly voice that resembled an explosion of foreign words to Levi’s ears. His erratic heartbeat was the only form of communication that made sense at that moment, yelling at him to “shoot, shoot, shoot already”

“Took me forever to find you, kid. Is that any way to greet an honest man?” the man rasped in his hoarse voice, tobacco weighing in every word.

He pulled the cigarette bud from between his lips and tossed it to the ground, heavy boot thumping and crushing what was left of it.

“Are you headed west or not?” he continued, making it easier for Levi to understand what he was saying, now that the cigarette was gone.

Levi adjusted his hands on the grip of the gun, fearing it would slip from between his fingers the way everything seemed to be doing. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek, face scrunching up in an almost painful scowl.

“Who wants to know?” Levi said in the firmest tone he could muster.

At that, the man turned round to look over his shoulder, peering through the dead trunks and dried patches of grass. A moment later, his attention was focused back on Levi, the shadow of a smirk playing on his chapped lips  
  
“The very same fellow you’re talking to. Didn’t see much lively company along the way.”

“Pardon me,” Levi’s voice dripped with sarcasm. At least, he hoped it did. “I meant why would the gentleman want to know?”

Levi’s question was followed by a snorting sound. The stranger shifted on his feet, right hand resting on his hip. The guy didn’t look like the patient type, and it wasn’t hard to notice that. Not when he started scratching his beard, upper lip curling into a snarl.

“Look, kid. I don’t know who’s the gentleman you’re going on about and I’ll be damned if I know what he wants to squeeze out of you. I asked you if you’re headed west or not. You don’t get English or what?”

“I get English just fine, old man. You’re the one who can’t take a hint, so allow me to make it a bit more obvious,” Levi nodded to the forest stretching behind the man, tilting his gun towards it. “Beat it.”

Once again, the man peeked over his shoulder. This time, he took a minute or two to scan the forest, eyes raking from one acacia tree to another. When he seemed to be satisfied with the result of his improvised investigation, he turned back to Levi, with what previously looked like a mocking smirk, more visible this time.

“Say, kid. There’s only trees in the forest and two dead men. I gunned them down since they weren’t heading your way with the best of thoughts. I didn’t follow your trail for nothin’.”

Dead men. Two dead men. And he was standing face to face with their murderer, who’d apparently tracked him down. God only knew how, when he was trying so hard to hide his tracks, seeking the forests and avoiding towns as best he could. Was he leaving a trail of some kind? Did this man have a dog? What? Levi resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to check.

“What do you want then?” Levi’s mouth suddenly felt a lot drier, “You can’t expect me to be stupid enough to just tell you where I’m headed after you’ve just happily confessed to killing two bastards, can you?”

“‘S pretty obvious where you’re headed, Junior.” The man stated bluntly. “Behind me there’s only the place you’re tryin’ to avoid. And behind you is the desert.”

Backing off a few steps, the man brought two fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly, causing a few birds to spread their wings and take off from the top of a nearby tree. The ruckus of wildlife was only covered by the click-clack of horseshoes as a dark brown stallion made his way to the clearing. The animal stopped right next to the man, bowing its head to receive a small, welcoming pat.

“Bastards were generous too. Got myself a pretty good companion since they got no use for it now”

Levi’s grip tightened so much that his knuckles ached, his fingers feeling cold even under a sun so searing it burned his face, neck, and whatever skin wasn’t covered in clothes. He kept his horse held close to him, eyeing the other animal as it trotted to its new owner.

“Still doesn’t tell me what you want, Herr,” Levi shrugged.

“Thought you needed a hand. There’s only desert stretching ahead and it’s much more dangerous than those old folks who were after you.” The man said and buried his left hand into the pocket of his dust covered trench coat, fishing out a crumpled box of ‘Duke of Durham’ cigarettes.

He stuck one between his lips and added “$200 and I’ll cross you the Coilha”

Money. Of course he wanted money. Levi’s eyes instinctively darted to the small leather bag he’d hidden between the skirt and seat jockey of his horse’s saddle, and then back to the man. If he knew who Levi was then he’d be damned if he didn’t know what he had with him; what’d gotten him into this mess to begin with.

With his thumb at the hammer of the revolver, Levi grumbled, “You’re wasting your time, Herr. I don’t have two dollars on me, let alone two hundred.”

The man tilted his head to the side, like an oversized bird sweeping its surroundings for easy prey. Carefully, he reached to his tattered cowboy hat and took it off slowly, revealing a mass of dirty blonde hair. Scratching his temple before putting the hat back on top of his head, he finally spoke again, with a tint of cheerfulness in his voice.

“‘M sure you can find a few good dollars to spare from the depths of your heart, kid. That, or… I could rely on more generous people. Like the sheriff of Ragcliff, if that sounds familiar”

So he did know who Levi was. Fuck.

Levi kept his face straight, no emotion on it but obvious annoyance. Even though he could feel his brow tremor and his upper lip twitch.

“‘T’s a free country, pops,” Levi said, “You wanna go begging the sheriff of some weirdass town, I’m not gonna stop you.”

The tense atmosphere was broken again by a low, howling sound. If you didn’t pay enough attention to his facial expression, one might have thought that there was a coyote or wolf nearby, making that eerie sound. But no, the deep grumble was nothing more than a humourless laughter, the stranger’s lips parting in a small crease, and his face keeping the same dead fish expression.

“Kid, you stand out like a sore thumb. If you think I am some sort of charity cause, then you’re having a pretty bad day so far,” he said and pulled back the lapels of his trench coat, for better access to his back pocket. There he found a folded sheet of paper, which he flicked in the air until he managed to open it.

“Thief wanted dead or alive. $1000 dollars for one unlucky fella called Levi,” he read it out loud, in a flat voice. After that, he turned the paper over, with the ‘Wanted’ poster directed to Levi.

“The resemblance is pretty much candid, don’t you think? Damn, the Ragcliff folks are good at printing out faces”

As his eyes focused on the paper, everything else seemed to blur: the trees, the horses, the man.

The face on the yellowish paper was unmistakably his own, every detail sketched out in dotted black lines. How long had it been since he’d left Ragcliff? Since the night he’d packed up his belongings and made a run for no specific destination, just told his horse to pound the dirt beneath its hooves and hope no one caught up with them by dawn? It couldn't have been long. Twelve hours? Maybe less. He hadn’t thought they’d even had a chance to realize what or who was missing by then, let alone have wanted posters. Melodramatic. That was the word he’d use to wrap up this country and its people if he was ever asked.

And then there was this asshole. All ragged, jagged, and rough in every aspect from that tattered hat to his deep, alcohol worn voice, playing some sort of game with rules Levi was ignorant of understanding.. He was right about one thing, at least...

....He really was having a pretty shit day.

“So, let me get this straight,” Levi focused both his eyes and gun on the man’s face. “You come here, find that poster on some random bulletin board, and decided ‘I’ll track this guy down and then ask him for a quarter of what he’s worth!’. Genius. And either I’m too stupid to comprehend your genius, or your genius is too stupid to be considered genius by human standards. Maybe even by horse standards.”

Taking a long drag from his cigarette, the man opened his mouth again, smoke overflowing from between his lips and disappearing high above his head.

“Kid, I’d advise you to stop playing monkey with me.” He commenced, with an irritated tone. “If I said $200, then that’s about it. It’s either you strike the deal with me or I’ll take you back to Ragcliff, where I can earn me some honest money. I’ll let you choose”

“Honest money?” Levi scoffed, “You call turning me in to hang ‘honest money’?”

“It’s a simple principle. I’m doing the community a favour by turning in a thief…” His voice trailed off for a few moments, while he blew another cloud of cigarette smoke in the summer air. “Besides, you’re barely holding that pistol right. Those two fellas who almost got you earlier? Experienced bounty hunters. They lay dead now in a ditch. Want to take your chances to see who’s faster?”

It was a rhetorical question. Levi knew, as he was sure the man did, that he stood no chance of escaping either a bullet in his head or a rope around his neck if he dared try to run. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel so sour at the moment. Life had a way of fucking with him, and today it had decided to fuck with him so that he either let a murderer lead him to his destination, or risk becoming one of his victims.

Levi let go of his horse’s reins, reaching instead for the leather bag tucked within its saddle. He held it to his chest, using his teeth to open it and then reaching inside. His strained, thundering heart stilled somewhat when his hand touched the carved golden surface of the faberge egg, running over the slight protrusions where diamonds were pushed along its rims. It was still there. It hadn’t mysteriously disappeared. His work had not gone to waste - yet, anyway. One wrong choice in this situation and he’d lose more than just hard work. The faberge egg wasn’t what he was reaching for anyway. What he wanted now was in the inside pocket pressed against the golden egg, that which held a little more than the two hundred dollars the man was asking for, the only money he’d managed to nab from the farmhouse before making his dishonourable escape. Levi was hoping to save them for when he got to Germany.

He wrinkled his nose and pulled a hundred notes out of the bag before securing it back where it was. “A hundred,” Levi huffed and held the notes in front of him, “You’ll get the rest if I get there with my ass in its place.”

“You see, kid,” the man began, catching the remains of his cigarette between his thumb and index fingers and pitching it into a small puddle of dirty water. “I have this problem with a thief’s word or promises. I’d rather have the $1000 in my pocket than the other hundred in my mind. If you can follow me, y’know?”

“Yeah? Well, I have a problem following a killer’s word,” Levi shook the notes at the man. “What’s to say you won’t take the $200, shoot me, and drag my cold dead body to the sheriff? That’d leave you with, say, $1200.”

Levi cocked a brow and lowered his hand to his side, “What’s a man like you need with money anyway? You don’t look like you use it, or you would’ve looked less like a...you know, a dead man? Long dead. Looks like you’ve been in the coffin for a good few years, Herr.”

The man horked up a lung-wad filled with tobacco and turned his head to spit. Wiping his mouth with the worn sleeve of his trench coat, he swayed back and forth on his heels, making a small cloud of dust rise from beneath his boots.

“The name is Smith. I am no Herr, or whatever it is you say back in Europe. Your accent screams ‘Heinie’ from where we’re standin’ to New Orleans, so it’s a wonder you didn’t get yourself killed by now, since you’re a walkin’ talkin’ boston.

“And just so you know, Junior,” he continued, while swatting his hand at a couple of flies drawn by the fresh bodies of the bounty hunters, “I might look dead, but I am very much alive. You, on the other hand, look full of life, but you’re very close to bein’ kaput. I ain’t going to ask this again. What do you choose?”

Levi sucked in a sharp breath, barely stopping himself from saying something that’d end up with him in the seventh level of hell. Instead, he pursed his lips and snatched the bag from under the saddle again, rummaging for the spare hundred. When he found it, he crumpled it in his hand and held it out for Smith to see.

“Good enough for you, Schmidt?”

Smith eyed the green bill, eyes turning to slits. His right hand landed on his hip again, but this time it went for the grip of his pistol. He slowly took the 1851 Navy Revolver out of its holster, eyes moving rapidly from the money to Levi. Taking a few calculated steps towards the other man, Smith reached his free hand and snatched the money out of Levi’s hold, stuffing it into his back pocket.

“‘S absolutely dandy, kid.” He added as he aimed the pistol at Levi. “Back on your horse and start moving,” he said firmly.

Levi blinked, grabbing hold of his horse again and taking a step back. The leaves under his boot sounded like shattered bone as they crumbled.

“Like hell, with you pointing that shit in my face,” Levi snapped, but for once just couldn’t stop the tremble in his voice, “Put it away. I’m not even fucking resisting arrest. What is wrong with you?”

Smith huffed, waggling the gun in the direction of Levi’s black horse.

“Kid, we’re in a hurry, if you don’t mind stoppin’ the chit chat. Do you want a warning shot to give you a little push?”

Shitty day. He was just having a shitty day. And most shitty days came to an end - he’d know since he’d been through a good few of those since he’d set foot on this land. All he was hoping for right now was that his life wouldn’t end on this particular one. He didn’t mind having more to come if it meant he’d have any more days at all.

Levi scowled, tucking his revolver back in its strap and looking to his horse, then back at Smith, “Are you gonna...watch me get on the horse?”

“Are you gonna get on the horse today?” Smith asked with another obvious tinge of irritation in his voice

‘Are you gonna get on that horse today?’ The funny voice in Levi’s head repeated, wanting nothing more than to tell that to Smith’s face. But despite his patience running short, Levi swallowed the knot in his throat and let this one pass. He knew better than to give a loony a taste of his infamous temper. Especially not when the loony was pointing a gun at him, whose barrel was lacking two bullets that had found a cosy shelter inside some mercenaries’ skulls. Speaking of being caught between a rock and a hard place -

“Fine, fine,” Levi grumbled and drew in a long breath. He could already feel his ears flame red, the bridge of his nose bubbling pink as he twisted his fingers around the reins and shushed the animal when it snorted and shook its head again. Like he didn’t get enough comments about how short he was, now he would probably get an earful from some mud-bathing wackjob.

“Scheisskopf,” Levi muttered under his breath, thrusting his foot through the stirrup and all but flinging his entire torso over the saddle. He wiggled, desperately attempting to bring his other leg up before the horse bucked him off altogether, as it probably had the right to. Oh, for the love of god, it wasn’t as if he was born to a family of medieval knights! Levi groaned, turning and twisting and fumbling until he managed to straighten up and secure himself on the saddle.

He ran his free hand through his hair for extra measure, and straightened his shirt before looking down at Smith and cocking a brow,

“Good enough?”

Meanwhile, Smith watched Levi going through the strenuous process of getting up on the horse with what seemed to be a childish curiosity and obvious amusement written all over his face. Levi noticed that he chose to save some snarky remark for later, as he pushed himself in the saddle in complete silence, seizing the reins and giving his horse a small tap of his heel. The animal started moving then, urging Levi to follow his lead and do the same, which Levi did without so much as a nod.

The sun was merciless above their heads. Levi didn’t feel much of its wrath while they were still covered by the moss-like leaves of the acacia trees, clumped and a palish, sickly shade of green. But he noticed the way it sucked the life out of everything, made it all heave with exasperation, a need for moisture in air as dry as bone. The trees’ cracking bark, the floor littered with fire colored leaves, and even the rocks seemed about to split into two. It made Levi itch in his seat, made him hate the way he felt so confined and trapped in his own clothes. The heat was a hand of bone cold fire, suffocating around his neck.  
  
Levi tugged at his collar, unbuttoning the first two buttons around it. What air he drew just didn’t seem able to reach his lungs all the way through, stopping just a little above their base. And he still hadn’t eased the weight on his horse, and in this heat it was a wonder the poor pony didn’t collapse already…

  
And then of course there was the fact he was actually trapped by some man in a coat that looked like it could - and probably should have been buried with - Levi’s great grandfather, god burn his soul.

Die. He was going to freaking die, and it was all because of Schmidtty over there who was strutting around like some goose gulping aristocrat.  
  
“What’s your name, anyway, Herr?” Levi started with as innocent a hum as he could muster, “Your papa couldn’t have just named you Smith.”

Moments passed since Levi tried his hand at making small talk. He kept his eyes fixed on the stranger’s back, waiting for a slight roll of his shoulders, a mean glance thrown over his them. The smallest hint at a reaction. But nothing; Smith didn’t do anything.

Did he actually hear him? Perhaps he did hear, but he didn’t feel like answering. That wouldn’t be surprising. Not when he was stuck in the Land of Savage Assholes and he had to put up with their Royal Highness.

“You wanna know where I’m headed after we get to George Town?” Levi pressed, “Or why I stole what I did? You aren’t curious at all?”

That must be it. Maybe God decided to smile at him and let Smith be a curious asshole. He looked like one anyway, given the fact that he stuck his beak-like nose in his business like it was as homogenous as melted butter.

“You came to Arizona, but didn’t bring a hat with you. If no mercenary gets to you, then heat-stroke will,” Smith croaked just as indifferently as ever.

That bloody bastard with his bloody stupid voice and know-it-all attitude. Walking around in the desert and thinking he was a hot turd. He was a turd, that was crystal clear.

“Yeah, but my porcelain clear skin will protect me,” Levi mumbled back. “I came here in search of my family’s long lost treasure. A plantation owner stole it. Just so you know.”

That was a lie, and an awful one at that. He didn’t really expect or want Smith to believe it. But the need to gouge out a reaction from the man was as severe as the suffocating heat.

“Sure, kid,” was the only answer that came from Smith. Did he bite it? Was this tattered, ragged fellow just as stupid as Levi initially thought he was? Not that it would shock him to his bone marrow. The man traded one grand for $200. That’s a good $800 gap. $800 was a lot more bills than $200, in case he didn’t know the value of money. He could at least count them. On his fingers.

“You’re not much of a talker, are you, Herr?” Levi droned, picking at his collar again, “The lone silent drifter, by Levi Ackerman. I’ll make a lot out of that book, and give you the rest of the $800 then. Lonely housewives love that shit. Handsome stranger riding a horse into the sunset and waving his gun around like a handkerchief. I’ll make up shit when it comes to the handsome part, don’t worry.”

‘Got you now, you sand ape,’ the funny voice took a triumphant inflection, a sweet moment of victory that died soon enough, only to be replaced with the familiar knot of anxiety when Smith’s horse suddenly stopped. Levi watched the man as he slung a leg, then the other, over the saddle and hit the ground with a loud thud, causing more dust to land on that horribly worn out duster.

Levi felt his heartbeat slow down to a weak rhythm, the cold claws of fear clawing at his insides and threatening to burst out of his ribcage, in crimson ribbons. What did Smith have in mind that was so important as to stop before even reaching the first sand dunes of Coilha? Did he actually get offended by Levi’s fleeting remark? Truth be told, it wasn’t advisable to mess around with loonies and guys who liked to take strolls in the woods and kill people. People who were sent to hunt Levi down, but still people. Levi had never learned when to keep his mouth shut and it was showing right now, big time.

He held his breath as he watched, lungs constricting, Smith come his way. It was impossible to read the man’s face, no lines above his brow to tell of anger or frustration, no thinning of cracked lips to speak of patience worn thin. All there was was the thumping of boots as the man approached him, eyes focused somewhere completely different, wandering around like they expected something to pop from the trees. Levi pulled at the reins, prompting his horse to huff and stagger back.

Smith cocked a brow at him, and for a moment Levi almost expected him to roll his eyes. He didn’t; didn’t come near Levi at all. Instead he headed to a nearby tree and planted his hands on its trunk, rubbing - grating - his hands against it.

He’s gone mad, Levi thought with a pitting stomach. He’s gone mad not three minutes into the trip...and has a pistol on him...and took my fucking money.

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice as Smith took hold of his horse’s rein and all but pulled Levi down. Before Levi even had the chance to react, he found his face being smothered in white dust.

“What the fuck!” Levi screeched, “What are you doing?!”

“I’m helping you keep the colour in your cheeks, kid,” Smith muttered under his breath and took a few steps back, to admire his handiwork.

Levi watched in pure horror how he brought his rough, blistered hands to his own face and dabbed his cheeks with the same powdery dust, the resemblance between him and a corpse uncanny.

This man was absolutely disgusting in every aspect of his being.

Smith took a final good look at Levi and added, “It’s good against sunburns. You don’t want your skin to bubble up and burst because you didn’t bring a hat with you in the desert, do you?”

Levi frowned, a failed attempt at a more vicious scowl, “You could have told me. My horse could’ve gotten scared. She could’ve launched me back to Nuremberg!”

“That would have been pretty ghastly, huh?” Smith concluded and sauntered back to his horse, getting up on the saddle and instructing it to move along, thus closing the ‘white, nasty mud treatment’ subject.

Could this day get any worse? It made Levi become awfully skeptical.

“Arschloch,” Levi snapped after him before he could stop himself, his horse strutting after. “Ich flippe gleich aus!”

His grey eyes were ablaze with restless hate, burning holes in the back of Smith’s head. Who was he to fucking blackmail him then smudge his face with mud, as if it was supposed to have some miracle effect against the suffocating heat? He loathed this narrow-minded jerk, hated him with a passion more powerful than any gang of thieves or shitty shitty twist in this shitty place. People didn’t behave like savages from where he came. Sure, there were dramatic, even violent events in the relatively small Burg he grew up in, but there weren’t any primitives who had the nerve to try their luck with him. Not when Levi was raised in the tough part of the town, where people led drunk fights in his mother’s tavern and Kenny had to escort them outside, to give them a ‘friendly’ reminder on how to behave next time they set foot inside. He wasn’t born and raised as a pampered middle class choir boy, he had his share of beatings and trouble with kids twice his size. ‘But they all look the same when they are on their knees, shrimp’ he remembered Kenny saying.

But this Smith fellow gave him an odd feeling, a strong hunch that he might not be entirely sane. Like the lights inside his head were on, but nobody was home. It was best not to play a wild card with him, and better to watch and learn for now.

“I don’t get German, kid. If you want to complain, then go ‘head and do it in English, so I can understand what you’re sayin’,” Smith barked again, the roughness of his voice making it seem like he had a hard time articulating words.

‘Or he doesn’t give a rat’s ass”. Like any other loony.

Levi wiped at his cheek with the back of a hand, and looked up at the sky burning above them. If the map he’d looked at was anywhere near accurate, then they’d be out into open desert soon, and for quite some time too before they reached another forest, river, or - god forbid - town. They’d have more than enough time to see whether this special treatment of Smith’s worked…

....or whether the man had just sprayed him with termites.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun stretched over the horizon until only a bow of red-orange light peeked above the ground. They had been riding all afternoon, until the green patches of already scarce vegetation were replaced with parched undergrowth and tumbleweeds, dry wind blowing from the west.

For Levi, the blistering heat was rapidly becoming too much to bear, especially when only the silent promise of barren land was growing before his eyes. It was hot and relentless, causing his vision to blur.

After the last remnants of light were slowly starting to dissipate, Smith’s horse stopped dead in his tracks. Levi watched the man turn his head left and right, like someone who was weighing a difficult situation and scrambling his brains for a solution.

Finally, he got off his horse once again and tugged at the reins, urging the animal to follow him to a nearby clump of shrubs, oddly shaped stones, and crooked tree trunks.

Levi could admit that he felt almost grateful when Smith turned to look at him and gave a small nod, suggesting that Levi should follow suit and hurry to the improvised camp. That gave him a sense of direction, a feeling that things were slowly starting to fall back on track.

Until he saw Smith tying up his horse to one of the trunks.

Levi goaded his horse to move after Smith. He didn’t follow the man in getting off, however, not really seeing the point in tiring himself without there being an absolute need to. Besides that, the ground was filthy. God only knew what kind of animals - humans included - had shat, pissed, or fucked over it, and he wasn’t about to drag his boots over all of that unless the sheriff himself was hot on his heels.

You could’ve stepped in coyote spunk, dragging the pups that never had the chance at life around with you. Levi smirked dumbly to himself. He should add that to the ‘lonely, handsome drifter’ book.

“Where’re you going?” He already knew his question would be met with silence. Smith either thought this would keep up his authoritative, manly image, or he just liked messing with Levi because that was the kind of tightass fuck he was. “Asshole, you’re gonna get footburn if you keep walking around like that, you know.”

Receiving no answer would had been a more endearing option than being treated with a huff. Like ‘no words, just horse shit’ Smith was the one entitled to be fed up with the entire situation. The nerve of some people.

“We’re stoppin’ for the night,” Smith mumbled quietly, as he began looking for chunks of dried wood among the dead bushes.

‘He wants to bash my brains in, that lying fuck’ was all that ran through Levi’s head, flowing like a turbid stream. That wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right, since it felt like something terribly wrong was about to happen.

‘That lying fuck’.

“Aren’t I supposed to decide that?” Levi prodded, “Since I’m paying you to take me to George Town, I should decide when and where we stop.”

He clicked his heels, his horse trotting forward to get closer to Smith. And with a louder voice, chock full with fake confidence and authority, Levi said, “And I say we keep moving, Schmidt. It’s not that late yet.”

“It will be pitch-black in a couple o’ minutes. We won’t be able to see ten feet a’ead of us.”

The same disinterested voice, the usual knows-it-all attitude. Levi was becoming more and more passionate about hating this tramp.

“Then we’ll make a torch,” Levi stopped in his tracks. “You know how to start a fire, don’t you?”

Smith dropped the pile of dried wood on the cracked ground. He crouched down and split the heap into two smaller portions, pushing one of it aside and began arranging the remaining wood into a pyramid-like structure.

“Get me some dried leaves,” he said, not bothering to look up at Levi.

Did he just boss him around? No, did he just think he could boss him around? What kind of employee was this man supposed to be? Levi pays him to do shit for him? That would sound hilarious if it wasn’t so blood-boiling outrageous.

“Pay me a hundred dollars, and I’ll think about it,” Levi huffed. “We’re not camping here, Schmidt.”

“No can do. Today’s gone an’ I am not about to wander at night like a blind cat,” Smith uttered and took off his hat again, repeating the same gesture of scratching his temple and furrowing his eyebrows.

Smith could slit his throat in the middle of the night. Maybe that was what he’d been waiting for: a time when Levi was too out of it to put up a fight. But then why hadn’t he just shot him back in the woods? Why didn’t he just shoot him now? What if...he was trying to find out where Levi stashed the egg, and then kill him? That would be two hundred from Levi, a thousand for his corpse, and a shit load of money for the damned diamond chicken crap. That sounded like a diabolical plan if Levi’d ever heard one, and by Smith. Was the man a bounty hunter or a damned banker? Both, it seemed.

The more important thing right now was what could Levi do about this? Running was out of the question. So was attempting to shoot him and running. Not when Smith still had his own gun on him, which he was probably a lot better at using than Levi was with his own.

Not when Smith still had his gun.

He could take his gun. While he’s asleep, or pretending to be. He couldn’t sleep - or pretend to - with his gun on him. Levi could take it then…

“I’m not getting you any leaves,” Levi snapped, leading his horse to a nearby tree before he made any attempts at getting off of it. It was easier than mounting. All he had to do was swing one of his legs over to the side of the other and hop down. Easy.

He brushed himself off and attempted to wipe off what aspen tree remnants remained on his cheeks. He then turned to tie his horse and took his sweet time doing so, using it as an excuse to treat Smith with the same cool nonchalance, “They’re disgusting and crawling with maggots that leave slime everywhere. You get them. Must’ve seen a lot of them in your coffin, Opa.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed to slits and he instinctively reached for his gun when Smith suddenly jumped back to his feet and brushed off the dust from his knees. He had to be extra careful with the loony, that was a reminder carved in stone. Any sudden move, any unexpected reaction from this man could lead to a turn of events, that was not necessarily aimed to be in Levi’s favour.

But instead of reaching for his own pistol, Smith just shrugged it off and walked back to the bushes, beginning to pick and tear dried leaves and thin twigs.

“We need to set a fire. ‘S colder than a witch’s tits durin’ the night,” Smith talked again.

“That is,” Levi began, “a disgusting metaphor, Schmidt.” He paused for a minute, looking around the campsite, then frowned, “Where are we supposed to sleep?”

There was a long pause while Smith threw the armful of leaves and twigs over the wood. He rummaged in his jeans pocket for another good moments, finally pulling out a box of matches.

Then the pitch-darkness around them was almost swallowed whole by tongues of blue and red fire, the wood cracking and groaning as it was set ablaze.

When Smith looked at him again, his face was brightened to an eerie appearance, his muddy blue eyes turning almost transparent. Levi had the feeling that he was staring back at a blind man.

“Here,” Smith then stated blatantly, moving his arm in a semicircle around him. “There’s a lot of room for both of us”

Levi blinked, eyes darting around in a panic before settling on Smith again, “You mean you want us to sleep on the ground?”

“Well, I didn’t have half the mind to drag a bed with me,” he muttered, throwing another piece of wood in the fire.

“But--but,” Levi gnawed on his lower lip, “It’s dirty. It’s crawling with bugs, and shit, and--, I can’t sleep, I won’t sleep here!”

He crossed his arms and leaned back against the tree, narrowing his eyes at Smith, “Fix it.”

“You can try sleepin’ on the horse if you want. But you’ll prolly get a mouthful of dirt if you fall,” Smith drawled and raised his hands above the fire, rubbing them together. “Or a broken neck”.

The smirk in his words was obvious.

Levi wouldn’t shoot him in the head when he got his gun. He’d shoot him in the dick.

“You’re making jokes?” Levi snapped as if it weren’t obvious. “I’m not shitting you. I’m not gonna be able to sleep here.”

“Then don’t sleep. As long as you’re still able to ride in the mornin’, it doesn’t bother me,” Smith shrugged, unfazed by Levi’s protests.

This man was unbelievable. If Levi hadn’t known any better, he’d think he was doing this just to see him bristle and boil while knowing he could do nothing about any of this. And Levi didn’t know any better, so he supposed that left him stuck; bitter and angry.

He kept looking from Smith to his horse, which was already starting to make itself comfortable by the tree he’d tied it to. No, sleeping on the horse wouldn’t be an option, unless he wanted to wake up as some ghost cowboy. Levi cringed, shifting in his place like an awkward child caught in the middle of breaking his neighbour’s window. He might as well just deal with this and hope the night ended faster than usual. With a barely stifled groan, Levi stomped over to Smith and reluctantly sat down opposite him, the fire crackling between them.

“Do you have a spare blanket. Or are we supposed to create our own by covering ourselves in shit?”

“I’ll get you one after we eat. Hope you got some cans in that load of bunkum you carry around.”

Another moment of extremely awkward silence fell between them, Smith still staring directly at Levi.

“That would be nice,” Smith added afterwards.

Levi let the silence simmer between them for a while more, squinting his eyes at Smith and pursing his lips. When he saw that their staring contest wouldn’t yield any winners, he sighed, rolling his eyes as he got back to his feet and trudged to his horse and the luggage left around it. He crouched in front of one, opening it with a click.

Levi looked over his shoulders at Smith and cocked a brow, “And what does his highness feel like eating?”

“Whatever’s on the menu. ‘M not picky.” Smith answered, eyes moving lazily from Levi to the fire, where they stopped almost mesmerised by the dancing flames and the tiny red sparkles that rose high above them.

“Beans. I have beans, and corn, and sausages, but I’m only sharing the beans. You’ll thank me later,” Levi turned back to the horse and pulled two cans and a spoon, shutting the bag again, and getting back up to settle by the fire, “when they resolve your constant constipation.”

His witty remark was met with the faintest shadows of a smirk playing on Smith’s lips. He stretched out his arm and took the can of beans from Levi, bringing it close to his face and giving the container a small shake.

“Seems like beans to me.”

Levi didn’t miss the vague trace of contentment in Smith’s words. He kept close eyes on him as he pulled out a hunting knife from his old and dirty trench coat, the sharp tip hovering over the cap only for a few seconds before Smith dug it inside, cutting along the metallic rim.

“What can I say? I’m an honest man,” Levi droned without taking his eyes off his own can. He reached down for his knife, which was still stuck to the side of his boot. His hands weren’t trembling or, god forbid, as sweaty as they were back in the forest, and could now hold the handle easily, sliding the blade out with little resistance from the tight leather pocket it was stuffed in. When was the last time he’s had to get something out of a can? With a knife that was probably duller than Smith’s sense of humour?

Levi frowned, watching Smith from the corner of his eye. He tried to mimick him, pressing the blade to the lid. Nothing. Tried stabbing it, only to have the knife screech and skid off, almost taking a finger off with it.

Fuck this. He rolled his eyes, setting the can down and going to grab one of the smaller bags from the horse before grouchily sitting back down. Who liked beans anyway? If he ate that shit, he’ll probably end up flying his way to George Town. Levi fumbled through the bag, and grabbing one of the now squished tortes he’d stashed there.

“Are you goin’ to use the spoon?” Smith’s voice came floating to him.

When Levi turned around, he saw him pointing to the spoon he left on his unopened can of beans. He planned on using that spoon sometime later along their journey.

“Not right now,” Levi curled his fingers around the spoon and drew it to him, “but I sure as hell will not if some random stranger sticks it in his mouth. Guess I’ll be sleeping without a bed, and you’ll be eating without a spoon, Schmidtty”

The man frowned upon hearing Levi’s remark. The lines on his forehead only seemed darker and more distinct when the light of their camp fire was beating on his face. As much as he liked to deny it, Levi felt a cold claw curling up in his stomach, flaring a bright red signal that a possible danger was near. You couldn’t trust killers, not even if Hell froze and all the devils turned into giant icicles.

“I’ll give you that blanket for the spoon,” Smith began, still eyeing the bent spoon

Levi considered it for a moment. He didn’t want to get on Smith’s bad side - before he had a way to secure himself, at least. But this wasn’t just anything, this was his spoon, something he’d be putting in his mouth - something Smith could put in his mouth. Who knew where that man’d been, and they had no soap or water to wash it with after. If he gave him the spoon, Levi would either have to eat everything with his hands like a barbarian, or starve.

“I gave you the beans for the blanket,” Levi eyed Smith, face softened with reluctance and worry rather than being its usual sharp blankness, “and I gave you two hundred to get me there in one piece, and here you are trying to kill me with a tainted spoon.”

“‘Snot going to be tainted. ‘M not going to scoop dirt with it or something,” Smith insisted, drumming his fingers on the can impatiently.

“Fine,” Levi kept the spoon clutched in a fist and outstretched his other arm, “I’ll give you the spoon for the blanket. But that means you gotta return the beans or offer me something else.

“So,” Levi cocked a brow. “What’s it gonna be, Schatz?”

Smith fell silent for a moment, running his tongue over his chapped lips. If he concentrated hard enough, Levi was sure he could hear the wheels and bolts turning inside of Smith’s head. He seemed to be thinking long and hard about the entire situation, trying to turn the odds in his favour. If there was any chance to change Levi’s mind on that matter.

“I don’t have anything that’s worth much, kid. Nothin’ that could interest you anyway,” he said, finally looking back at Levi

“Shame,” Levi clicked his tongue and tucked the spoon safely into his coat pocket. He looked to the fire, taking a large bite out of his sweet roll, “That’s a real, real shame, Herr. I’m sure you’ll figure something out, being the bold guy you are and all.”

Levi could have sworn that Smith’s face darkened with anger, despite the light that was beating right in front of him. His eyes narrowed to slits, throwing Levi a cold glare as he pulled the cap of the can out with the tip of his knife.

“Whatever, kid,” he finally grumbled, breaking the eye contact to pull his head back and gulp down the beans with a swift move.

Levi didn’t look back at him, tried to avoid glancing at him from the corner of his eyes with little success. The torte seemed to have lost most of its taste along the way, or maybe it was his dry mouth that made the once spongy, sweet texture dry and sandpaper like. It scratched the inside of his cheeks, and hurt his throat when he swallowed. What he would do for those beans Smith was gulping like a goose.

He scowled at his misfortune and turned to look at the man, still desperately trying to squeeze some taste out of the roll of dough he was chewing. The light from the fire was doing weird things to both Smith and his surroundings, changing tree branches into clawing hands, sparse grass into little ghosts and goblins. And in the middle of it all was the devil, his blonde hair matted and dusty, deep eyes lined with streaks that made them deeper still, and chapped, cracked, barely viewable lips around the - probably poisonous - rim of a can of baked beans.

“Tell you what…” Levi began, shifting slightly closer to Smith, “I’ll give you the spoon for good if you open my can for me…”

“Don’t need it now.” Smith said and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, “I’m already finished,” he then added and raised his empty can for Levi to see.

“You might need it later,” Levi urged, “for the other cans of beans. Can’t spend your entire life being a gulping goose, right?”

It took Levi all the strength he had not to flinch when Smith suddenly got up and tossed the can away, kicking it with his boot. Levi pulled his knees closer to his chest, catching them in a loose hug as he watched the man walking to his horse and rake through the small leather sack tied to the saddle. A few good moments had passed before Smith was back on his spot, dropping a blanket on his side of the improvised camp.

Levi’s breath caught in his throat when he spotted him circling the fire and creeping closer to him. With a shaky hand, he instinctively reached for his boot, grabbing the handle of his knife into a tight hold.

He had to admit, he never expected in a cat’s nine lives to feel a comforting weight on his shoulders when Smith threw the blanket over him, the scratchy material falling over his head.

“Try not to make much noise. ‘M done in for today,” Smith said while covering his mouth to prevent a yawn from slipping between his lips

Levi pulled the blanket off of his head, staring at Smith with a mixture of relief and….gut pitting disappointment. His beans...Levi looked to the sealed can and almost felt his lower lip curl in on itself. At least he got to keep his spoon. His scowl returned with a fury, scrunching his entire face up painfully tight. He got up and threw the blanket over his shoulders, letting it cover his back as he dragged it along. And with half hearted attempts to tone down his displeased grumbling, he rounded the campsite in circles a few times like a cat, desperate to find a comfortable and sanitary place to sleep. There was none, of course. It was all the same. Sand, probably worms and germs and God knows what, and tufts of grass or moss, he couldn’t be too sure.

Smith was looking comfortable enough, from what Levi could see. He’d just picked a random spot to dump his blanket on like he wasn’t about to wrap his entire body with it, then proceeded to kill the fire. Levi pursed his lips, looking around for one last time before deciding there was no use trying to convince himself this patch of sand would be different from that one. That didn’t stop the cringe that settled on his features as he lowered himself to the ground, fists instinctively clutching the edges of the blanket. He took his boots off with a little struggle, and set them next to where the fire had been crackling a minute ago. It felt strange; sitting here, on the very thing he detested the most. Dirt, sand, bugs. It made his stomach whine like a sick dog. Tonight definitely wasn’t the night he’d attempt to make for Smith’s gun. Not with the way he was feeling, and not with the fact he just found out Smith had a gun and a knife. Fucking perfect.  
Levi lay down with the speed of an elderly turtle, his eyes blank and wide and screaming soundlessly when he felt his face touch the ground. Had the blanket been a person, and had the person had skin, then Levi would have torn it off with how he was clutching it till his knuckles bleached.

Yet another reason to question his existence.

It wasn’t long until Smith was fast asleep. Loudly. Levi could hear the man snoring and grumbling in his sleep. As for seeing him or any other thing around him, that wasn’t an option. He kept his eyes fixed on the endless sky above him, rows and rows of constellations stretching from one corner of the Earth to the other. You couldn’t catch the sight of such a wild sky above Nuremberg, not when the gas lanterns were overshadowing the stars and any other unearthly source of light. It was almost eerie, how a man could feel so small when there was only wilderness surrounding him and the heavens gazing down at the insignificant lives down there.

Levi raised his hand and reached for the dwarf planets that hung above his head, watching stars falling and die with blown pupils. He felt like climbing on the highest rock and taking off to the atmosphere, to float endlessly in that ageless, luminous black matter.


	2. Chapter 2

Smith grunted from the tapping sunlight beating down his face, the morning air already feeling thick and hard to breathe from the searing white heat of the desert. He slowly got up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The drastic change in temperature was still hard to cope with, especially when the nights were cold and silent, the sand losing every bit of warmth it sucked during the day. But this morning was unusually hot, the heat waves dancing before his eyes and making the expanding dunes of sand seem closer to him than they actually were. A sign that the call of the Coilha was stronger day by day, challenging travelers to wander deeper into this valley of death.

Somewhere nearby the camp, a jackrabbit hopped from one of the dry bushes and scurried between the rocks. Other than the rustle of leaves in the brittle breeze, there was no trace of sound in the air. One could say that the stillness of the desert swallowed every motion or sign of life. That made Smith become immediately aware of his surroundings.

He looked in the direction of the kid’s sleeping place, only to find the blanket neatly folded, but no trace of his companion. That couldn’t be good. No, that wasn’t good at all and it could become worse if the situation was left uncared for.

Smith slowly rose to his feet, running his tongue over his chapped lips to feel a bit of moisture against the swelter. He carefully took the hunting knife out of his boot and headed to the where the horses were tied. Horses, two of them. So the kid didn’t have half the mind to flee, not on the horse, at least. But who was foolish enough to head directly to certain suicide and decide to walk on foot through the desert?

Unless someone unwanted payed them a late at night visit. Smith felt the tips of his fingers and toes prickle with cold blood. There was a possibility and not the best of them. He could have gone through the day with what was on his plate already. Which wasn’t little.

A probe into the immediate surroundings led to no result. Smith looked behind and under every rock, crawled between the clump of bushes and followed a short trail of tattered ground and pebbles. Zero. Nothing. Absolutely no bloody result. As if the kid hasn’t been giving him a hard time since they started drifting.

“Kid, where did you go?” Smith called, trying to keep the pang of irritation out of his voice. “Quit playin’ monkey with me””

Silence. Long and absolute. The knot in his stomach twisted, and he wasn’t sure if that was due to frustration or his worsening anxiety that someone had indeed been to visit while they were asleep. Still, that barely made any sense, considering the fact he was still alive and kicking. Though he didn’t expect anyone who’d attempt to nab his bounty to have a good head between their shoulders, he’d at least expect them to be bright enough to put a bullet between his eyes before doing the deed. Damn kid, having him run around chasing bullshit theories because he couldn’t stay put.

“Kid,” Smith called out, loud enough for his dry throat to burn. Still nothing, but just before he drew in a breath to try for louder, he heard it; the brush and rustling of branches against clothes. Smith turned to the direction of the sound, a bunch of dusty creastone bushes. And lo and behold if it wasn’t the little bastard, dragging his stubby legs through with the most disinterested look he’d ever seen on man or fish. Smith ran a blistered hand over his face and tried his best to suppress a groan. It was too damn early for him to be dealing with babysitting issues.

“I think they heard you back in Ragcliff,” the kid grumbled, dabbing at his mouth with...was that a napkin? Christ almighty. “Was your dad, by any chance, a vulture?”

“Where on Earth have you been?” Smith asked and shifted on his feet, keeping Levi under a suspicious gaze. “I am not up and about to play hide an’ seek with you.”  
  
“Getting food,” Levi shrugged, stepping past Smith like he didn’t exist and went to plop down next to his folded blanket, “since someone wouldn’t open my can of beans.”

Smith turned around and walked to where Levi was standing, crossing his arms above his chest and looking down at him.

“Where did you get the food from?”

“A magical place called none of your business land.”

Smith huffed and repeated the question, this time slowly, as if he was talking to an actual kid.

“Where. Did. You. Get. The. Food. From?”

Levi seemed to roll the question in his head, squinting more in annoyance than in fear or guilt and allowing the silence between them to stretch for what he probably thought was a smart and annoying amount of time. When, in truth, Smith wasn’t really annoyed. He just felt tired.

When he finally decided to speak, he coupled it with pulling a few small, round, glossy red balls out of his pocket.

“From the bushes over there,” Levi nodded behind Smith and plopped another berry into his mouth. “Preiselbeere. Forgot what they call them in English.”

Smith’s first impression was that the kid was munching on cranberries. But on a second thought, he remembered that cranberries didn’t grow in the middle of the bloody wastelands. The small, luscious red beads that the kids was stuffing into his mouth were holly berries. Extremely toxic and a direct cause of diarrhea and vomiting. It was becoming more and more obvious that Smith didn’t hit the jackpot this morning.

“Kid,” he began carefully, moving closer to Levi, “throw those damned things away”

“Like hell,” Levi pushed himself away from Smith, holding the berries protectively to his chest, “Go pick your own. Bushes are full of them.”

He didn’t know whether to be amused or mortified by the kid’s determination to keep eating the toxic berries. As the turn of events anticipated, there was a high chance that the kid’s stomach will turn against him any minute from now.

“Kid, those are not cranberries or whatever you thought they were. You are eatin’ holly berries and you’ll be sure as hell losin’ control of your bowels if you don’t throw them away”

“You’re just throwing shit because you don’t want to admit I can do just fine on my own,” Levi hissed.

With feet planted firmly on the ground, he edged away from Smith again, eyes narrow and crackling not unlike the fire Smith had set the night before. He lifted one of the cursed berries to his lips, pressing it to the lower one and shooting a bored look at Smith, the seemingly explosive exterior melting back into cool impartialness. He  
would have been fooled, had it not been for those burning eyes.

“Well, I’ve got two words for you, Schmidtty,” Levi breathed in, and Smith tried to think of a way to look interested in whatever insult the kid would throw. He couldn’t.

“Fu--” Levi stopped, his face swirling towards the center. His lips pursed and curled, eyes narrowing, and nose scrunching up. The fingers that were curled around the berries twitched, almost dropping a couple of them to the ground.

Oh boy...was all Smith could think as he watched Levi squirm.

“I’d suggest you hotfoot it into the bushes, kid. If you don’t want to upchuck on yourself,’” Smith said and had to cover his mouth to stifle a healthy laugh.

Levi didn’t have time to conjure up a smart retort, instead shooting to his feet and darting as fast as the jackrabbit Smith had seen earlier. He barely had any time to reach a nearby tree before, as expected, emptying every berry, bean, and biscuit he’d munched on that morning. It was a pitiful, almost painful, sight to witness, really. The way the boy’s already narrow shoulders seemed to hunch in on themselves, his spine shuddering and back hunching with every heave. All that ran through Smith’s mind as he watched was whether the kid thought being this stubborn was worth those consequences.

Smith sighed and looked over at his blanket, still strown on the floor from where he’d been in a hurry to jump off the ground and look for the missing young man. He crouched down to pick it up and begin rolling it into a small bundle, before proceeding to get Levi’s and then his horse to pack them up. They would have to eat on the way, if they wanted to make any use of the sunlight. Not that it looked like the boy would be having a craving for anything any time soon. Which added salt to the wound, when Smith was reminded by just how much time this little incident would cause them to waste. He ran a hand through his hair and went to get his day time attire from where he’d thrown them over the branch of a nearby tree, sparing a glance over his shoulder at the boy while he was pulling his pants on.

Suspenders fastened and his hat back on top of his head, Smith returned to the clump of bushes where the kid was barking at the ants. He put his boot on a jagged stone next to Levi and propped his chin in the palm of his right hand, casting him a patient look.

“Did you take everythin’ out already?” he asked.

The boy turned to him with a pale, sweat slicked face, and subtly tremoring body. He looked almost docile if not for the eyes- the ever crackling, loathing eyes. If Smith didn’t know any better, he would have thought he’d killed the boy’s mother.

“Shut up,” Levi barely managed, running a hand over his face and returning to trying to steady his breathing.

“ ‘M not a big fan of makin’ conversation either, kid. But we have to drift,” Smith informed him, bending over to rub the dust off his boot.

“For a second there I thought you cared about m--” Levi’s eyes shot wide, and he doubled over for a second time. All that came out was a dry heave and a couple of empty coughs that almost threw him off his feet, “Ach du lieber Gott…”

Smith pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, his patience starting to run short. He sucked in a deep breath and walked over to the bushes, approaching Levi and giving him a rather rough pat on the back.

“You’ll become dehydrated if you don’t quit it”

“It’s not like I can control it!” Levi gurgled, then snapped back at Smith, “This is all your fault.”

Smith sighed and shook his head, “How is that sup’osed to be my fault exac’ly?”  
  
“You jinxed the berries,” the boy groaned, shakily reaching into his pocket to pull out his handkerchief to wipe his mouth clean of a whole different thing. Smith had a strong feeling he knew what he was saying was bullshit, and was just grappling for something to make him look less like an idiot for not listening in the first place.

“Sure, kid. Ma Nature and I put that bush there for you,” he sighed and tugged at the boy’s suspenders. “Get a move on already.”

“You’re doing a shit job,” the boy went on. Thankfully, he was starting to do as he was told and moved from his spot. He stumbled and staggered his way to his horse, looking ready to strangle someone, “$200 for this? I could have gotten a house for that in Deutschland! But no, all I get is this shitty treatment. What kind of a guide are you? A damn lousy one, that’s what!”

Levi’s angry tirade received only a shrug from Smith, as he moved to his own horse and went for his leather bag, pulling out an iron flask. He then proceeded on passing the flask to Levi, hoping the boy will catch it and not make him pick it from the ground.

“Save your breath and drink water, kid. Or you’ll faint and fall off the horse.”

“Now he tells me,” Levi snatched the flask anyway and uncapped it. “Did you...nevermind.” He raised the flask above his mouth so it wouldn’t make contact with his lips, and took a small gulp before handing it back.

Smith threw him an incredulous look and pushed the flask back into Levi’s arms.

“I said drink it, not taste it. Did puke get into your ears or what?”

“No, your shit did,” Levi looked to the flask and then back at him. “My stomach feels like shit…”

“You don’t say. Seriously?” Smith feigned surprise and gestured Levi to drink already.

Levi grimaced, looking at Smith with a mixture of spite and hesitation. Yet he didn’t argue, and took a larger drink in the same manner as before. He raised a hand to his mouth when he was done, wiping off the remaining drops of water on it then shoved the flask to Smith and began getting on his horse without another glance at the man. The same, incredibly amusing struggle Smith had witnessed when the boy had mounted his horse the first time repeating again.

“If I throw up on my horse, it’ll be your fault.”

“I’ll take the blame for that,” Smith responded amusedly.

He went back to his own horse, putting the already half empty flask back into the bag. They had to find the nearest settlement and fill up with water, unless they wanted the heat to get at them and blister their tongues and lungs.

Hopefully, there would be more than water to get from their next destinations, Smith thought and pulled down the rim of his cowboy hat, to cover his eyes once again.

The next few hours were spent as Smith had expected them to; with the boy having them stop every few steps because he wasn’t feeling too well. It took a few rounds of screeching heaves and spluttering coughs - and too damn many stops, in his humble opinion - for Levi to fully empty his stomach of however many berries he’d managed to swallow while Smith was asleep. By the end of it, he suspected the kid wouldn’t gather up the nerve to be calling him a corpse any time soon. Not with his now puffy, sardine grey eyes and plaster pale face. He looked like a mannequin gone horribly wrong, or one that’d been left in an attic to rot. Except the boy wasn’t headless- yet, anyway.

The sun didn’t seem all too merciful today either. It hissed above their heads and seemed ready to fry them where they stood with every step their horses made. As far as Smith knew, there should be a supply store a little way from here. A shabby shack like thing that looked about ready to collapse on the heads of any unfortunate fellows that’d step inside it. Just like its owner, not that its appearance mattered much. The store probably had most of what they’d need for the remainder of their journey. Water, mainly. Anything else they could cope without. Still, Smith couldn’t help but wonder if they’d end up walking in the store to find its frail, old owner a lump of rotting flesh and bones. A shame, that would be in certain aspects. Not really in others - namely that they’d end up with good food and water supply for free.

Before his thoughts had the chance to wander further off, they were interrupted by the unmistakable gruff whine coming from the horse trailing behind him.

And the boy riding it.

“I think we should settle down for the night,” the boy groaned, “before I die. Unless that’s your plan. Poison me on demon berries and make off with the moolah.”

Smith wrapped the reins around his hand and pulled at the bridle, making the horse pause and turn around.

“It’s five in the afternoon, kid. The sun sets at nine.”

“My throat disagrees,” Levi’s shoulder’s slumped. “I could faint, and fall, and break my neck. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, your throat has to put up a bit of a fight because we’re runnin’ out of water,” Smith retorted.

From the twist in the boy’s lips, Smith expected another sarcastic remark, another way to waste time they didn’t really have, but nothing came. If anything, Levi looked almost resigned to his fate, choosing to answer only with the slump of his shoulders as he urged his horse to move again without another word. He was probably too tired to. Smith didn’t really know whether to feel glad for that, or sorry for the boy.

The afternoon was slowly dying down when their horses put foot on the battered trail to the supply store. Smith could spot a scrawny mull tied to a small waggon in the yard, which was nothing better than a few patches of dried weeds, surrounded with barbed wire.

He started approaching the shop, his horse moving with lazy steps through the residual heat of the day. When he was a few feet away from the entrance, he hopped off the horse and put the leather bag over his shoulder. He peeked over his shoulder at Levi and nodded to him to do the same.

Levi rolled his eyes, and slowly - agonizingly so - followed Smith in getting off his horse, and leading it to the store to hitch up by a less than trustworthy pole.

“I’ll wait here,” Levi stated.

“You’ll wait inside,” Smith responded and began following the short path to the shop.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Levi said. “Just go get your shit and stop making my life miserable. More than you already have, that is.”

This time, Smith turned around completely, staring at Levi with a hard expression, the corners of his mouth downturned.

“Kid, you’ve already made me lose precious time with your little puke parade. I’d suggest you keep that smart mouth on the low, and tag along. If you don’t want me to drag you inside myself, that is,” he said, upper lip curling up into a snarl.

Levi’s eyes softened and every tense and wound up muscle in his body loosened. The stern glare he was attempting to shoot Smith wouldn’t fool anyone. It was like watching a crow chick; ruffling the few feathers it had and cawing till someone cawed back, then it’d shrink and go back to minding its business.

His eyes lingered on Levi’s face for another moment, before Smith decided to pay him no mind and continue moving towards the shop; sure enough, Levi was slugging along right behind him. Smith cautiously put a hand on the rusty door latch, the other falling on the grip of his revolver. He was tense, almost expecting to find the old owner laying in a pool of blood and the shop ransacked. The beat-up wood door opened with an infernal creak, light sneaking inside and making the dust dance in golden rays. Much to his relief, the old owner wasn’t nearly as dead as Smith thought he was, but he wasn’t too far from that either. He was sitting behind the counter, smoking a cigar. He could’ve have been anywhere between fifty and a hundred years old. His head was shaped like an egg, surrounded by tufts of wiry gray hair and speckled with brown stains, a friendly reminder that his liver was about to fail him sooner or later. He moved his weasel-like eyes to them, shielded by a pair of dirty spectacles and gave them a curt nod.

So much for niceties in this part of the country.

Levi wandered past Smith with eyes as flitting and curious as a child’s, scanning the store from one corner to the next as if he was searching for treasure buried between the moldy wooden planks. When no such treasure was found, he stepped up to the counter and folded his arms on its splintery surface.

“Pardon me, herr,” he cooed in a tone Smith hadn’t heard out of him before, “but you wouldn’t happen to have any vinegar, would you? Apple cider, preferably.”

“All I have is what you see, Sir,” the shop owner drawled in a bored voice, not bothering to move his eyes from the book he was reading to Levi.

“Charming,” the smile didn’t leave Levi’s voice. He stepped away from the counter and went back to inspecting the shelves, leaning on the tips of his toes to peer at some of the higher ones. He stopped by one of the shelves and frowned, reaching up for a second but giving up instantly when it was obvious he wouldn’t be reaching whatever it was he wanted any time soon.

“Hey, Schmidt,” Levi said without moving his eyes from the shelf, “mind giving me a high and mighty hand here?”

“What is it?” Smith asked and moved to the shelves.

“Kardamom,” Levi nodded to the seeds in one of the boxes on the higher shelves, “that.”

“What would you need that for?” He pressed, slightly exasperated.

“To poison you in your sleep,” Levi rolled his eyes. “Look, either you hand it to me or I climb you to get it. Please?”

Smith pursed his lips until they disappeared into a white line. He stared long and hard at the shelves, until he let out a defeated sigh and reached for the box of seeds.

“You’re gonna take additional weight with you. That means you’ll move slower and complain more,” he countered and handed Levi the box.

“I need it,” Levi snatched the box from Smith’s hand and took it over to the counter. “A couple of seeds won’t hold you down too much, Schatz.”

Smith flashed Levi a taunting sneer as he passed by him and returned to the counter. He took out two empty flasks from his bag, waving them in front of the man.

“We need some fresh water, Mister Wyatt. If it ain’t much to ask from you.”

“I couldn’t help but notice that you brought a friend with you, Erwin. So much for your lonely, dog days, huh?” Mr. Wyatt stood up and put the book down on the small wooden stool he was previously sitting on. He took the flasks from Smith and headed to a small door behind one of the shelves. “A moment, if you please.”

“Irvin? Your name’s Irvin?” Levi blinked at Smith before breaking out in a simper. “And here I am, trying to be the ‘European’ one. Irvin Schmidt. You cannot make this shit up.”

He slipped his fingers into the box and plucked a couple of seeds, plopping some into his mouth and then holding the others to Smith as he chewed, “Kardamom?”

“It’s Erwin Smith, as in the American way of pronouncin’ it, kid,” Erwin said and pushed the box of cardamom aside. “And no, thanks. I don’t fancy eatin’ seeds”

“Oh, me neither. They taste like shit, but they make your breath nice and fresh. Who knows when we’ll be kissing death smack on the mouth, with the way you’re leading us. Man’s gotta be prepared.” Levi wrinkled his nose, “Though I do prefer vinegar. Apple Cider. Best there is.”

Smith just rolled his eyes and walked over to the counter. He put both elbows on its surface and propped his chin on the back of his hand, as he was waiting for the old shopkeeper to return with the flasks. The scrawny man appeared from his secret room behind the shelves, carrying the two flasks and putting them on the counter, right next to Erwin. They exchanged a few whispered words for a moment or two, the man peeking over his shoulder from time to time.

He seemed a bit pale, now that the last rays of light were peeking through the dirty window and beating down his face, but he didn’t show any sign of unease. He kept whispering things to the blonde man, his thin lips barely moving. He seemed like a man who had spent most of his life learning how to talk without moving his lips, sharing secrets and valuable pieces of information to a select few who stepped into his shop without ill intentions.

And judging by the cordial way he talked to Smith before and offered to give them water for free, he might have been an important factor in Smith’s survival in the middle of the desert.

“I think that there’s some bad news ahead of you, son,” he muttered to Smith. “Had some visitors not just long ago. They bought cartridges for hunting rifles. Unless they found a species of deer livin’ in the desert, I don’t know why they would bother headin’ straight into the wastelands armed to the bone.”

Erwin’s jaw locked almost instantly. He brought a hand to his cheek and scratched his fast-growing stubble, visibly concerned about something. Something that might turn out to be a great deal of trouble.

“They sure have me clueless, Mr. Wyatt. God knows what madman escaped from the Sheriff’s barracks this time,” he finally said.

“They only know how to stir up trouble ‘round here,” Wyatt added and peeked over his shoulder in Levi’s direction.

His voice dropped to barely a soft murmur, “And they marched like a stampede all the way from Ragcliff. Isn’t he too far from the Sheriff’s barracks, son?”

“Who are we talkin’ about, Mister Wyatt?” Erwin asked and scratched his cheek.

“Don’t tell me you still believe in that ‘wanted dead or alive’ aphorism, Erwin. The kid is the closest he can get to the ‘dead or dead’ list. What on Earth were you thinkin’ dragging him after you? If he stole from Master Bennett’s plantation, then he is already pushin’ up daisies. A thousand is the highest you can go in Arizona.”

“But some of ‘em offer more, if you can wrap your mind around that.” Erwin replied, his eyes flickering with an electric spark. “Now it’s none of my business what the kid took with ‘im when he left Ragcliff, but some important fellows are more than interested into getting their hands on that thing.”

Mister Wyatt studied Erwin’s face with a hard look, already thin lips pursed into a white line. They stood like that for what seemed to be a few good moments, watching each other in complete silence, before the old shopkeeper took of his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. He sighed heavily as soon as he was done cleaning them.

“I guess you have your share of rightfulness, son. I am too spent and old to argue with you anymore. I just can’t seem to grasp what’s the fuss over a foolish kid. Stealin’ is bad nonetheless, and stealin’ from Master Bennett is pure folly, but I don’t think this requires a new huntin’ season.”

“Money is money, af’er all. They would sneak a viper into their Ma’s night gown if they got paid for it,” Smith snarled and took the flasks off the counter. “You just take care of yourself. Mister Wyatt. Keep an eye out for any weird lookin’ fellow.”

“Will do, Erwin. You too,” the old man patted Erwin on the back and rounded the counter again, going back to his book.

“Are you done yet?” The boy snapped from the door, shifting from one foot to the other like a distressed toddler.

Smith blinked, looking to his side as if to make sure that really was Levi standing by the store’s door and not some apparition brought on by stress and lack of water. If there was something he could credit the boy for, it was the fact he seemed to move like a ghost, sliding from one place to another without so much as a single sound. Wasn’t he standing right next to him a minute ago?

Smith shook his head and sighed, not dignifying Levi’s whining with an answer as he dragged the flasks past him and back out into the dry air and scathing sun. He didn’t have to look behind him to know the boy was following; the shuffling of his shoes against the dusty path probably being loud enough to alert his family back home. He was only quiet when it was least convenient.

“What did the old shit want?” Levi said, “Anyone ever told you it was impolite for two people to whisper when there are three bastards in the room?”

“The ‘ole shit’ gave us water for nothin’ kid, in case your bowels decide to go south,” Erwin retorted and pushed himself up on the horse.

“Yeah, I’ll bet he did it out of the kindness of his golden heart,” Smith heard Levi grumble before dragging himself to his own horse. There was the sound of more shuffling, and various German words he could only guess were curses as Levi went through the usual struggle of getting on his horse. “He probably stole something from you, and you’re too dazed to notice.”

“He’s not a thief. Unlike someone who talks too much,” Smith answered and urged the horse to move forward, advancing along the road to nowhere.

“You wouldn’t know what a thief looked like if he punched you square in the jaw, Irvin,” Levi’s horse trotted along after Smith’s, coming up right next to him. “Not unless they had a thousand dollars on his head, that is.”

Erwin didn’t glance back at Levi, his lips quirked up in a smirk.

  
When you live alone in one place for long enough, it tends to start ‘speaking’ to you. Some people said it was because the human mind wasn’t meant for long periods of silence, turning to any sort of conversation to fill in the gaps of solitude, be those conversations real or hallucinated. Erwin didn’t really know how accurate that saying was, but he couldn’t deny that in the long, quiet years he’d spent wandering the far too open grounds of Coiha, he had picked up the habit of interpreting almost every sound it made. The wind howled a bit louder than the coyotes at times, warning him of an upcoming storm. The crunch of sand and gravel under his horse’s hooves, whispering comforting words, telling him they were making progress with every step. His whistling and the yelping of cactus wrens creating a unique symphony, the meaning of which he’d yet to bother to try and figure out. And many more other sounds; some got lost in the ambient of hissing grains of sand sliding over one another, and the hands of winds sweeping over them. Others were too loud, too pronounced, and spoken by things that refused to be ignored.

The loudest two were the rush of any nearby source of water, and the sissing silence that came during the burning afternoons. Life and death. No sound could be more difficult to miss. Now, as he and the boy continued their way through the Snakeroost Valley, nothing behind them but trails that would be wiped up before anyone had the chance to make out who they belonged to, there was nothing to hear but the latter silence. Erwin didn’t have to hear it to feel its hands burning on his skin.

He pulled the bandana around his neck up to cover the lower part of his face, fastening it just at the bridge of his nose. It was good that they’d passed by Wyatt’s shack when they did. More than good; it might just have been a game changer. And for what? Because the boy had been too stubborn to listen to him and was one berry away from poisoning himself, gulping them down like some demented turkey. They couldn’t afford another mistake like that if they wanted to get to Hatillo on time - or at all.

Smith spared a glance over his shoulder to look at the boy. He looked placid enough; all but slumping against his horse, eyes glazed and staring at nowhere specific. If Smith hadn’t seen bone deep exhaustion a million times before, he would have thought Levi found brittle bush and tumbleweeds to be the most fascinating things he’d ever set his eyes on.

Probably sensing Smith’s eyes on him, the boy turned to him. Immediately, the worn eyes narrowed, lips screwing up in a deep scowl. Smith rolled his eyes and turned back. The berry incident would be the damned last on his watch. He’d either make sure of that or drag the kid’s cold, lifeless body to Hatillo instead. It was better than both of them being dead, that was for sure.

But he had more important matters to take care of, like finding the next suitable spot for camping tonight. Somewhere not in the middle of the road and in in plain sight, especially not now, when Wyatt warned him about the upcoming manhunt. Damn, they surely moved fast when there was good money at stake. But Smith would be damned if he was about to leave his paycheck in the hands of a dirty bounty hunters’ clique.

The silence continued to stretch between Smith and the boy. Not that he wasn’t grateful for the moments when he was able to gather his thoughts and put them end to end, without incessant rambling blowing in the back of his head. But, as much as he despised to admit, the kid’s chit chat made for pleasant background noise, and him being silent for a considerable amount of time could mean he was either sick or planning something foolish.

“How‘re you hangin’ there, kid?” he finally decided to break the ice.

“Just peachy,” Levi muttered, “Why wouldn’t I be? The sun is shining, the birds are shitting, my throat is crammed with acid. I’m fucking hysterical with barely contained happiness.”

“Glad to hear that.” Smith gave him a small nod and moved his eyes back on the road.

“When can we stop?” Levi pressed. Smith almost regretted starting the conversation, “Because you obviously don’t get sarcasm.”

“We’ll stop when we’ll find a good place,” Smith answered

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know. Soon enough, if we are lucky.”

“What the heck do you know then? It’s like this is your first time going through here,” Levi paused long enough for Erwin to think he’d finally shut up. No such luck. “This isn’t your first time here, is it, Irvin?”

“No, it ain’t my first time here. But no desert has just one straight way to follow. I’ll know when to stop when I get there,” Smith replied and couldn’t help rolling his eyes for what felt like to be the tenth time today.

“My throat feels like sandpaper,” Levi rasped, “If I die, I want my two hundred back.”

“I’ll make sure to put them in your casket. You don’t have any water left with you?”

There was a pause, and some ruffling as the boy fumbled with his flask, “Got plenty. Why? Did you spill yours? I ain’t sharing. Don’t think I forgot about all that shit with the spoon.”

“Then drink it and zip it,” Smith retorted.

“You zip it,” Levi snapped back, “And I’m saving my water so I don’t end up having to suck some old guy’s dick for it later on.”

“Good strategy, kid.” Erwin sucked in a breath and tried to go back to his more important thoughts. What Mister Wyatt said had been putting pressure on his shoulders since they left the store. There was no pistol fight to discuss in the future, but hunting rifles and an organized hunt down, and it was pure folly to run through a rain of bullets flicking a pistol in the air.

Despite the still hot air that lingered above him, even as the night was swallowing more and more colour out of the sky, Erwin had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it didn’t make any difference when he had always known that his grave was in the desert and waiting for him.

It only took them another hour on their horses before the wind turned from torrents of fire to chilling, ghostly hands. It was one of the things Erwin never seemed able to get used to; how the desert made his clothes stick to his skin with sweat during the day, only to freeze it off by night. Smith looked up at the sky, tugging the bandana down. It color had turned from a transparent, almost colorless blue to a dusky, pinkish purple. They needed to set camp soon. He spotted a place by a lone acacia and a few clusters of shrubs a few feet away. It’d have to do for now, though he’d prefer somewhere a little more sheltered.

He tugged at the reins and changed the direction, his horse slowly and obediently moving to their new camping spot. Truth be told, Smith was literally starving. He hadn’t eaten anything since last night and remembered he forgot to take some food supplies from the shop only when they were 20 miles away from Mister Wyatt and any kind of canned goods. Absolutely fantastic.

He hurried to get off the horse and tie the animal to the narrow trunk of the acacia.

“We have to set a fire now.” He informed Levi, while he was taking out the blankets from his leather bag..

The boy only answered him with a soft grunt. When Smith turned to him, he was untying his bags and setting them down on the ground in a neat little pile. He sure hoped the kid had at least a few things left in there to keep them from staying up all night with the sounds of their stomachs eating themselves up.

“Help me find wood. Look for fallen branches,” Smith instructed him, and pointed to the small acacia tree. “I will get the leaves.”

Another grunt, and Levi crossed his arms, staring down as he headed over to where Erwin was pointing, crouching down by the tree.

Erwin followed in his footsteps and circled the tree, reaching for the dry leaves. He pulled them up in fistfuls, collecting them in the pockets of his trench coat.

As much as he tried to calm himself, to let his mind wander off in whichever direction the wind was blowing, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Wyatt had said. The words conjured a tornado of thoughts in his head. When would those men, whoever they were, catch up with them? Was it possible that they were already watching them right now, waiting for them to close their eyes before they crouched by their resting heads and slit their throats? It made his heart hammer in his ribcage, pulse in his throat. Those kinds of people were as cowardly as people came. They didn’t travel in solitary numbers, but in packs like dogs. They knew they wouldn’t have a chance with him individually. They also knew he didn’t have a chance with them if the entire group lunged at him.

Pull yourself together, Smith, Erwin thought as he absently picked whatever leaves caught his eyes.

Pull yourself together, and think. That’s the only way you can hope to get out of this.

Click.

Smith’s skin burst in goosebumps, every muscle winding up like a suicidal piano string. He knew that sound. He’d heard it so many times and has never bothered to count. The hammer of a gun being pulled back. The worst part was he couldn’t think. He couldn’t fucking think. All that went through his mind was that blood-curdling sound and how close it was. Smith expected to topple over with a hole in his head any second now.

“Still think I’m barely holding the gun right, Irvin?”

That damned kid.

Erwin swayed on his heels and let the leaves fall from his hands, as he was staring at Levi and at the gun barrel pointed directly between his eyes.

“What on Earth do you think you’re doin’, kid? Put that down,” he muttered, one of his hands shooting instinctively to his gun holder. Empty.

That damned fucking kid.

Levi cocked a brow, “Told you, you wouldn’t know what a thief looked like if he punched you in the jaw. Not even if they had a thousand dollars on his head, it seems.” He sneered, “My two hundred, please. I need to be on my way if I want to make it in time.”

“Makin’ it in time to your grave or what?” Erwin couldn’t help but to let out an incredulous laugh. “Play time’s over, kid. Hand me back the gun.”

“Ach du meine Güte!” Levi spat, “How many times did your mama drop you on your head? Give me the money so I can go, before I add murder to my list of good deeds. They can’t hang me twice.”

“Kid, stop monkeyin’ around with things you don’t know how to use,” Erwin said through gritted teeth, taking a tentative step forward.

“One more step and I shoot you in the leg,” Levi instinctively took a few steps back. Erwin didn’t miss the hint of reluctance in Levi’s voice, which only made this entire situation a great deal more ridiculous. “Another step after that and I aim for your head.”

“You are not shootin’ anyone tonight, kid,” Smith said decisively, keeping his eyes fixed on Levi’s and not the gun. He took another step forward and another, trying to keep his composure as hard as he could, given the fact that he had an unpredictable kid aiming a loaded pistol at his forehead.

“Schmidt, I swear,” Levi’s finger wavered on the trigger, twitching at it, “I’ll fucking do it.”

Erwin didn’t say anything. Instead, he approached even more, fingers curling into tight fists and blood pounding in his temples. It was the heat that finally got to him, he thought. The entire day spent starving and moving along dunes of sand, under a resentful sun, but he mustn’t, couldn’t, lose his composure in front of a kid, a bloody irritating one.

Bloody irritating and fucking stupid, was the last thing Erwin thought before his eyes flashed white and an explosion blasted through his ears, followed by a sharp, dull ringing. Every nerve in his body screamed. Not in pain, but panic. The boy did it. He actually fucking fired.

What worried him more than all that, however, was that he couldn’t feel anything. No blinding pain from his knees shattering; the skin, muscle and tendon blown to smithereens. Nothing but his blood freezing in his veins, his temples aching as fear and anger thumped against them like two hammers. Maybe he was dead. Maybe the boy hadn’t aimed for his leg, but for his head.

If he was dead and this was hell, then all the things he’d heard about it were incredibly exaggerated. It felt nothing like the way it sounded in the stories old men told around the campfire. Scorching heat, and sulphur and brimstone, and someone driving a fork up his ass. It was empty, and bland. The only thing resembling ‘hell’ about it was this red, fiery need to strangle the kid with his bare hands if he could.

Speaking of which, he could still hear him.

“Scheiße!” He heard Levi squeak, “zum Kuckuck noch mal!”

Whatever that meant, it’d better be a prayer, because if Smith was dead than he’d make sure to spend every waking second of his afterlife making this brat’s life a living hell.

Erwin shook his head and brought his hands to his eyes, pressing the heels of his palms into them. He tried to calm his frantic heartbeat, to clear the damned ringing and the spots that kept flashing in his eyes. When he brought them away and looked up, he found no traces of death or heaven or hell or whatever his panic induced stupor had made him believe he’d see. All there was was the boy, on the ground, rubbing at his ears and hissing a litany of unintelligible words, rubbing with both hands.

Both hands. Two empty hands. Erwin’s eyes darted around for the missing firearm, then froze when he spotted it not inches away from where Levi had fallen square on his ass. In the second it had taken for that fact to sink in, he saw Levi lunge for the gun, throwing his entire weight towards it. Erwin’s own body sprung into action, one wild arm darting out to try to push Levi out of his way only to find it trapped under the boy’s chest where he pressed himself on the ground, fingers curling around the handle again.

If the deus ex machina worked for Smith, the gods didn’t seem to be that generous with Levi. Erwin hissed, feeling the gravel digging into his fingers and peeling the skin off. He tried to snatch his hand back, only to have the kid thrashing and writhing for the gun.

“Cut it out already!” He barked, using his shoulder to push Levi away.

“You cut it out!” Levi screeched back, pushing himself away with his feet and scrambling to try and get back on them. “Even your gun is shitty, I swear to god!”   
  
“Have you lost your fuckin’ mind, kid?” Erwin spat out and tried to shove Levi off his hand “Guns ain’t toys for you to screw ‘round with ‘em.”

“I wasn’t screwing around!” Levi held the gun in an iron grip, roughly pushing himself off Erwin’s arm, “I missed. Better be damn sure I won’t miss again if you don’t get the fuck away from me.”

Erwin sucked in a deep breath and took half a step back, only to make a lunge at the boy, going straight for his waist and catching him in a tight grip, a movement that sent them both to the ground.

“Verdammt!” Levi gasped before tumbling to the ground.

He jerked and flailed under Erwin, the way a jackrabbit would in the jaws of a bobcat, kicking and struggling to keep his hold on the gun steady.

“Get. The fuck. Off me!”

Meanwhile, Smith tried to keep a composed face during the more than awkward situation he was dragged in. He seized the hand Levi was holding the gun with, pressing his thumb against the spot he could feel the boy’s pulse flowing.

“If you don’t want me to break your wrist, drop the gun,” he rasped, feeling the sweat dripping down his brow and onto his eyes.

Levi finally stopped his frantic thrashing. His wild eyes finally caught Erwin’s, limbs stilling when Erwin’s fingers tightened around his wrist. Every breath he drew stretched and pulled at his ribs, heaving, panting like all the air in the world wouldn’t be enough to keep him alive right then. With all that said, he still didn’t let go of the gun.

“Fick dich,” Levi spat.

“Kid, I swear to fuckin’ God Almighty,” Erwin barked and pressed harder, hoping that the kid will actually use his brain for once and drop the gun.

Levi looked to his wrist then back at Erwin. His jaw slackened, eyes blinking and wide when they realized nothing about what Erwin had just said was a joke. Lord knew the last thing Erwin wanted to do was resort to violence. Especially when it was obvious the boy wasn’t as ‘bad’ as he was ‘stupid-bordering-on-mentally ill’. Still, a broken wrist was better than a hole in either of their vital organs.

“You’re crushing my ribs,” Levi said in a careful tone. Erwin felt his legs shifting under him in the slightest way, “I can’t breathe…”

“And you won’t be breathin’ until you hand me the gun,” Erwin replied and squeezed his thighs around Levi’s ribcage, giving him a clear warning.

“You...fucking...asshole!” Levi hissed, eyes livid again.

He didn’t know to what extent the boy’s idiocy went, but for a second he seemed to think he - with a body mass matching that of a pile of twigs - could push Erwin off of him. Levi’s narrow hips jerked, hands tensing and attempting to pull away from Erwin’s grip with little to no success, and his legs kept shifting and kicking out. The attempt was so ridiculous it almost made him burst out laughing had he not been burning with barely suppressed anger.

But then one leg bent at the knee and lurched in a way Erwin could only guess was Levi’s failed attempt at kicking him off. What happened instead, drew a completely different sound out of Erwin’s lips.

It came out like a broken whimper, faster and more deceiving than Erwin’s ability to grasp the situation and control himsel. Levi’s knee rubbed against the front of his pants, putting pressure on his crotch and igniting a spark of pleasure down his spine. And the sound that followed this instinctive reaction was close to something one could hear inside a brothel or a lovers’ nest.

Erwin prayed to every god he could think of that Levi hadn’t heard it. He couldn’t think of a single thing he could say that’d make this less awkward, hoped with every fiber of his being that he wouldn’t need to.

But it was too late to hope for anything. As usual, God let all his prayers go unheard. He could tell from the bewildered look on Levi’s face, the way his lips parted in a small ‘o’ of shock or horror, Erwin couldn’t really tell.

Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit.

At least he let go of the gun… And Erwin would have made a bigger ass of himself if he didn’t seize the moment and snatched his gun off the ground and digging it back into its holster. He then scurried off of Levi and brushed the dust off his clothes, trying as best as he could to avoid the kid’s look.

“I told you to stop foolin’ around with weapons, kid,” he finally snapped, but without any bite in his words. Just pure, out-and-out embarrassment.

Levi said nothing, simply picking himself off the ground so slowly that Erwin thought he’d turned into a statue a couple of times. He stumbled onto his feet and awkwardly shifted back to the spot he’d stacked his bags at, busying himself with picking through the contents of a random one.

The rest of the night was spent eating in silence. For Erwin, the beans tasted like stale cabbage. He let the boy eat near the campfire, while he set a place for himself under the acacia tree. In his entire 37 years of existence, he never had to do a walk of shame. Not in front of an irritating kid, from what he could remember.

Eventually, after an inner struggle and mentally kicking himself until he could feel his ass getting sore, Erwin pulled the blanket until it reached his chin. He strategically chose to sleep facing the acacia tree, thus remaining at a safe distance from Levi and sleeping with his back to him. God only knew he didn’t need any more trouble tonight. Especially if it involved the kid. The bloody kid who wouldn’t give him time to breathe already.

It was going to be an agonizingly long journey, and the perception of time was slow and painful in the desert. Thank God he only had a few more hours to spend in unconsciousness until they hit the road again.

 

Levi watched Erwin moving about out of the corners of his eyes. He had to force himself to focus on his food and not on the man. He couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with the man right now, or possibly ever again after what had happened.

He’d thought the only thing that’d gone wrong with his plan to steal the gun was that he didn’t expect it would be so hard to use if need be. He didn’t expect the gun to fly out of his hand, or to send him toppling on his ass the way it did. Who the heck even used these pieces of shit? Giants? Well, when he thought of Smith, that didn’t seem like such a farfetched explanation. He didn’t expect Smith to just pounce at him the way he did, and threaten to break his fucking wrist for the damned thing. He certainly didn’t expect his knee to get trapped between his stomach and Smith’s crotch, or that it would be so hard to push him off, and end up landing himself in that...situation.

Those few minutes were some of the most uncomfortable in Levi’s entire life. He was entirely caught off guard; didn’t even realize it for the first few seconds. Actually, he didn’t realize anything was out of place at all - well, besides the fact he was wrestling a bounty hunter for his shittyass gun - until Smith made that sound. It wasn’t quite the surprised gasp or, better yet, the blood curdling scream he’d anticipated from jamming something into a man’s crotch. Instead, what he’d heard resembled something he’d heard time and time again in an entirely different situation with entirely different men. It made Levi’s head swim whenever he tried to think about it.

Levi swallowed, the last spoonful of beans weighing like a hard rock as it rolled down his throat. He set his can aside when he was done, absently staring at the crackling fire. Smith hadn’t put it out before burying himself under his blanket, and Levi couldn’t bring himself to start an internal rant on how much more incompetent that made the man seem in his eyes. He couldn’t really bring himself to feel anything but sorry for both of them.

Stupid gun. None of this would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for that stupid gun.

  
There were two things Erwin hated more than searing 12 o’clock heat waves: brats who stole his gun and threatened to blow a hole in his kneecaps, and staying up all night because said brat didn’t know when to stop monkeying around and causing him to question his morals.

Saying the previous night was hellish was putting it mildly. His eyes felt like lead filled goblets, rolling around in his sockets as he struggled to focus them on the road. He hadn’t been able to close them for too long; having to snap them open every few minutes because a certain image of a certain spoiled kid looking up at him with silverish, doe eyes, thin brows raised, and lips parted in sh--.

Erwin shook his head again, bringing a hand to his face in an attempt to wipe away his tiredness. Damn brat just couldn’t let things go smoothly for an entire day. He was silent now, trudging behind Erwin without so much as a sigh or grumble, the same sullen attitude he’d displayed just before trying to blow Erwin’s brains out. Part of him hoped the awkward encounter had taught the boy a lesson on why he should listen to adults. Another more sensible part of him knew that was too good to be true, and that Levi was probably just planning something that would scar them both far worse than the gun incident.

Erwin looked up to the sky. It wasn’t the same cornflower blue that   
had been stretching endlessly above their heads since they started drifting. Now it was ashy grey, save for the weak band of blue that was hovering over the copper coloured cliffs. Their peaks gave the bottom a jagged edge, whereas the canvas of clouds was hanging heavily over the desert. It wasn’t a good omen by any means, Erwin thought, as he pushed the rim of his hat lower on his face.

There were days like this one when everything stood still and there was no sound or rapid movement that could offer the wastelands a bit of life. In every direction he chose to look, Erwin saw only sand, dust and even more sand, without any small animal to pop out of nowhere and sprint to God knew what hiding place. Not like a certain spot in the desert looked different from any other. It was the same scenery on a rather large scale, divided into small fragments of the same big picture that Erwin saw again and again for enough time to burn itself into the back of his mind. Maybe that was one of the main reasons why he couldn’t understand how some experienced people got lost in the desert, when all they had to do was follow a straight path until a different landscape started spreading before their eyes. And if you couldn’t walk in a straight line and find your way out of a boiling hot maze, you could always find a watercourse. Yes, it seemed like you were wasting your time chasing rainbows, but Coilha was that kind of arid harlot that could become wet at times, if you bothered finding that damned watercourse, so narrow and superficial that it looked like someone took a piss on the road and it starting sliding down.

“Hey, Irvin,” the call sounded foreign, and almost shrill to his unsuspecting ears, pulling him from both thoughts and tiredness. It was followed by several quick steps of Levi’s horse as it came up next to his.

With a barely suppressed sigh, Erwin looked to the boy only to find something thrust into his face.

“Want one?” Levi asked, no sting or bite or dare in his voice. What kind of crap was the kid up to this time?

He blinked a few times, trying to take a good look at what the kid was shoving in his face. It pretty much looked like a square rock, brown and burnt and having a grainy surface that strangely reminded him of….cake. And it was cake indeed, a small piece of it leaving crumbles on Erwin’s lap with the way the kid was shaking it to and fro.

That was a dramatic turn of events in Erwin’s book, one that made his stomach growl with the constant sensation of hunger and suspicion, all niceties aside. Someone had an ace up his sleeve, from the looks of it.

“I am not hungry, thank you,” Erwin muttered under his breath and slowly pushed Levi’s hand away from his face.

“Come on,” Levi frowned, “who doesn’t like cock?”

Low bloody blow. That was one hell of a low bloody blow and Erwin had to bite his tongue to stop himself for lashing out at the kid. If yesterday was cut out of a hideously bad joke, then today might as well be the punchline of the year.

“Who doesn’t like what?” Smith asked with the last remaining bits of his patience.

Levi’s frown deepened, dipping into his face like a face drawn in wet mud. He seemed to consider Erwin’s tone for a minute, not saying anything, but not pulling the blasted thing out of his sight either. The cake kept dangling between them like a pendulum counting Erwin’s patience, and just when the clock was about to strike, the boy decided to speak.

“.....cock. Törtchen, Torte, Kuchen. Isn’t that right?” Levi squinted, “Like bread except they're sweeter? Cock?”

Erwin couldn’t help running a hand over his face and digging the pads of his fingers into the corners of his eyes. He could feel the beginning of an awful headache pulsing in the back of his head, like he wasn’t having the time of his life already.

“Cake and cock are two different stories, kid. If I want to put somethin’ in my mouth, I’ll take the cake. If others choose the latter, then it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me.”

“We have a lot of words for cock, too,” Levi huffed and nibbled at the pastry in hand. “If you don’t want any, you could be polite about it. Oh, wait, you’re allergic to any form of civility.”

“Sure thing, kid,” Erwin added hurriedly and rocked in the saddle, urging the horse to start moving again.

And the day had only just begun. He felt like kicking himself to the next town.

“Are we heading to Lakenesse? That’s supposed to be the forest around the edges of George Town,” Levi called from behind Erwin, “and you’re moving too fast. Who set your horse’s ass on fire?”

“Lakenesse is miles away from where we stand, kid. We’re headin’ to a new settlement,” Erwin answered.

“What’s that?” Levi pressed.

Erwin heard Levi’s horse snort and the boy curse under his breath, then the frustrated clopping of the animal’s hooves as it stepped up by his own. He didn’t look at Levi, but could feel the boy’s eyes burn into the back of his head. Lord help him, he couldn’t handle another tantrum right now.

“Irvin, what’s a settlement?”

“‘S a small town. Like a camp, but smaller,” he replied, hoping this wouldn’t be the start of a long row of questions.

Maybe he would be lucky enough to die of a heat stroke and finally rest.

No such luck. Erwin groaned internally when the trotting of Levi’s horse stopped in its tracks, the tension in it so obvious that he could all but hear its hooves digging into the sand.

“I can’t go there,” Levi’s voice was flat. It was a statement, just what Erwin needed.

“What do you mean you can’t go there?” Erwin pressed, trying hard not to lose his temper again.

“It means I can’t go to the small town camp shelter,” Levi snapped. “We need to change route.”

“I am not goin’ to change route halfway to the settlement, kid,” he retorted and began moving again.

“Fine,” Levi hissed, “then I guess I’ll be making my way to George Town on my own. Thanks for wasting my time, and two hundred dollars, Schmidt!”

“Cut me some slack, will ya?” Erwin raised his voice and stopped the horse again. “You’ve been doin’ nothin’ but dumb things since we started drifting. Now move.”

“I can’t go into a town!” Levi said, “They’ll know who I am! They’ll wring my neck before I even set foot in it. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“We won’t stay there for long. I need to get supplies and water.”

“Then go get them. I’ll wait for you somewhere...at the forest! I’ll wait for you in Lakenesse.”

“There ain’t no bloody forest anywhere near us, kid. It’s only sand dunes and rocks until we reach town,” Erwin groaned and took off his hat, running a hand through his hair.

“I. Can’t. Go. To. Town,” Levi repeated like he was speaking to a toddler. “You’re supposed to keep me safe, not fuck me over. If you can’t do that then why the hell bother? You’ve got your money.”

Erwin took in a deep breath and put the hat back on his head.

“You won’t kick the bucket anytime soon, kid. The desert foxes are much like Mr. Wyatt. They couldn’t care less ‘bout what you’re looking for, as long as you don’t plan on botherin’ them.”

Levi didn’t look like he was about to move any time soon. Not with how his shoulders wound up, his face twisting in on itself in distress. He kept looking over his shoulder and then Erwin’s, as if checking both directions for a nearing threat only he could see. His horse stuttered in its steps, and for a minute Erwin thought he was going to turn around and disappear into the opposite direction. Even when he didn’t - when he kept still, just looking in every direction his neck would permit him to - Erwin remained as tense as ever, expecting the boy to bolt away or do something stupid any minute now.

Just peachy.

Erwin hadn’t really given any thought to convincing the kid to go to Hatillo with him. The boy didn’t seem too particular about keeping himself out of harm’s way. He’d eaten raw berries that could’ve been poisonous. He tampered with a gun and almost ended up shooting himself in the foot.

He stole from a damn plantation owner and made off with a horse, no hat, and too much luggage!

The last thing Erwin thought he had to worry about was that Levi might have doubts about wandering into a town miles and miles away from the one he’d run from.

But, of course, he would. Of course every little detail had to be against Erwin. Every little thing worked in the direction of giving him a head splitting headache. He felt like screaming.

“I can’t go to town,” Levi rasped, more like a cornered mouse now than he’d ever seemed on their entire trip. “You have no idea what they’ll do if they catch me. I can’t go to town. I can’t.”

God Almighty give him strength, because his patience was getting ready to take a flight to the moon.

“They won’t care. Do you even know how many thieves and murderers crossed the desert without as much as a broken arm? People lose their trace. A great many sought shelter among the desert folks,” Erwin explained, turning his horse round, so he could come face to face with Levi’s.

“No,” Levi spat, all hissing and biting again, “I’m not going to some shithole town with you. Either you change the route or I’m turning around right fucking now.”

There was no using trying to knock some sense into the kid’s head. It would lead to nothing but more time spent under the merciless sun, and Erwin was aware of the effect it was having on his both temper and mood. He wasn’t about to bust a coronary because the damned fool didn’t feel like getting a move on and get done with all this fuss.

They could change route, sure. It wasn’t like they were in for a major change in scenery any time soon, and the desert was much like a labyrinth for those who were crossing it for the first time. It had twists and turns and dusty paths that split cliffs in half, all following the same route, for a trained eye. Erwin could change route any time the kid felt like it, since the destination was the same.

Truth be told, he almost felt generous today. A few hours added to their journey were nothing compared to the few hundred dollars added to his prize.

They had all the time in the world, really.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated! Tell us what you think :D.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Erwin goes hunting. So if you're not comfortable with hunting and cooking critters, then you might want to skip this one. 
> 
> Again, huuuuuuuuge thank you to [Ravenreux](http://ravenreux.tumblr.com) . You're absolutely amazing, I cannot even begin to describe how awesome it is to work with you :D. Check out her work at [Ravenreux](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreux)

 

“Can I ask you a question, Irvin?” Levi stirred his beans with the same spoon he’d been willing to fight Smith to the death for a few days earlier. 

The air around them cut like knives, cold and sharp as it blew over their hands and faces. Levi’d learned that Smith preferred to sleep in his undergarments, which made no sense at all, since the thin cotton clothes seemed more fitting for the kind of weather they faced in the morning, not the freezing hell that arose every night. Or maybe that was just Levi’s bitterness speaking; he hadn’t really had the time to pack any extra clothes himself, and the idea that he’d been wearing the same rags without washing them once in the past three days was starting to make him twitch whenever he thought about it. Random, meaningless conversations with Smith was one way to keep himself from doing that.

“A really personal and distressing question,” Levi added, stuffing a spoonful of beans into his mouth, “Bitte?”

“What is it this time?” Erwin rasped, while munching on his own beans

“How come you’re wandering around the desert all by yourself?” Levi asked, “Meaning, don’t you have anyone asking about you every now and then? Must be hard for them to keep track of you if you keep running around.”

“There’s Mister Wyatt who still gives a rat’s ass ‘bout my whereabouts. That’s more than enough for me” he replied and stirred the beans in his can with a wooden spoon he got from Mr. Wyatt’s.

“But no parents? No friends from our world and not the afterlife?”

“My parents have long been six feet under, kid.” Erwin added, “As for friends, they are pretty much dead too”

“Why? D’you kill them?” Levi looked up from his can.  

“Others did it before I tried my luck”

Levi snorted, refocusing his attention on what was left of his food.

Everything about their situation spelled terrible. The days were too long and hot, the nights were too short and freezing, the food tasted more of the cans they were kept in than their natural flavor, the company on this trip was...less than pleasant. Sometimes, Levi wished he hadn’t stolen the damn egg. Some days, most days, he wished he hadn’t bothered coming to America at all. It was nothing like the image he’d had painted on the backs of his eyelids by many a visitor to this ‘promised’ land. It was supposed to be the land of opportunity, new beginnings, a land where dreams came true.

All Levi got out of it was a headache.

His attention drifted, along with his eyes, to his horse, now in a peaceful slumber - the kind Levi hadn’t tasted since he’d set out on this cursed journey. He thought about the bag tucked safely under the saddle, and about the egg tucked safely within the bag. He had no idea how much it’d be worth back in Germany; perhaps it was worth nothing at all. He hadn’t exactly stolen it for its worth. No, it was mainly done out of spite for the family he worked for; to show them that he wasn’t one to be tampered with. After all, he’d come here to _work_ as a _craftsman,_ or at least serve under one. That’d been the plan he’d had in his mind before leaving Bavaria: work, get enough money to start a teashop, settle down.

But that’d all gone to hell thanks to the almighty Master Bennett.

Levi wrinkled his nose and set the can down, stretching his hands in front of him and watching them glow red and orange by the fire. His time at that plantation was the last thing he wanted to think about. He needed something to help get his mind away from all that. Especially after the shitty couple of days he’d been having recently with the berries, and the degrading gun scheme gone wrong, and all this heat...

His mind sparked, already halfway through a string of entertaining thoughts before Levi could stop it, every single one centered around the person nearest to him. It was ridiculous and stupid, and the last thing either of them needed was for more tension after that gun sc--.

Too late.

“I don’t really have the right to taunt you for being alone,” Levi murmured, “I’m not exactly surrounded by a swarm of friends and family here.”

“I could tell,” Erwin said as he got up and went to his horse to take the blankets, “We’re not in the most friendly place either.”

“My mother died of tuberculosis when I was three,” Levi raised his voice, making it a point to look at Erwin with the most convincing doe eyes he could muster. “I don’t even know her real name…”

 

Erwin fell silent as he began taking off his dusty trench coat and folded it neatly. The kid’s words landed on him like a sucker punch. He had his share of misfortune and tragedy, his or others, to know that these things only piled up until they became unbearable. But heck, he wasn’t used to _kids_ getting all emotional around him, even if said kid was not much younger than twenty. 

These tragic affairs just weren’t Erwin’s favourite conversation topic.

“I am very sorry to hear that, kid,” he muttered, starting to unbutton his shirt and get ready for the night.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” Levi continued, toeing the sand around the fire, “I sometimes feel like a bad omen, you know?”

“How so?” Erwin asked half heartedly.

“Because seven years after that, my uncle died. After adopting me, that is. He got stabbed. Right in the neck. I didn’t even know the human body could contain that much blood.”

He should have known better than to press these matters further. God, he couldn’t take sad kids telling sad stories about dead relatives. Maybe that’s why he liked to wander alone, safe from all the tragedy and misfortune in the world.

“That’s really tough, kid. ‘M really sorry about your old folks.”

Levi shrugged, and got up to stretch. “Nothing I can do about it now, I guess.”

“Of course,” he continued, “it does get shitty sometimes. Real shitty. You know that feeling? When it’s night and you feel so empty because there’s no one to hold onto? Nothing to anchor you to this life? I don’t know about you, but to me that feeling’s terrifying.”

“I can’t say I share the same feelin’. But it does sound pretty awful to me too,” Erwin answered quietly, as he slipped off his tattered jeans and boots and took hold of one of the blankets, draping one over his shoulders. “I sup’ose it  gets better with time.”

“Do you mind if I asked for another thing that makes it better? For me, at least.”

“Go ‘head”

“Don’t take this the wrong way like you always do,” Levi said, “but would you mind if I...how do I say this...slept a little closer to you tonight?”

“.... _what?”_

Erwin was firmly convinced that he misheard what the kid said. Sure, his mind must be playing a good charade on him, just before it shut down and he could go the sleep, at last.

“You want to do what?” He cleared his throat and asked the boy again.

“See? I knew you’d take it the wrong way and give me stomach cramps,” Levi sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “I said would it be alright if I slept closer to you so I don’t get gnawed on by some rabid deer. I didn’t say I wanted to fuck you, Schmidt.”

Okay, he was already pretty sure he didn’t have any problem with his hearing, unlike the kid, who had a problem with identifying the species that lived in the desert. Either way, the situation was spiralling out of control fast, and Erwin wasn’t quite sure where the kid trying to go with this sudden burst of emotional confessions. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to give him the benefit of the doubt just one time; he was sleeping with the gun under his pillow anyway.

“I wasn’t assumin’ any of that,” Erwin added quickly and lay down on the sand, “but I don’t want to hear you open your mouth during the night, understood?”

“You’re not exactly the most pleasant company I’ve ever had, Schmidt,” Levi grunted, walking over to Erwin to pick up his own blanket.

He paid Erwin not a modicum of attention as he laid the blanket beside him, leaving a gap not wider than his leg between the two blankets. Levi then settled down beside him, turning to face the opposite direction.

“Good night,” Levi said in a fake sing-song voice.

“Night,” Erwin muttered quickly and pulled the blanket right under his chin.

He could safely say that he had a lot of mixed feelings about the horribly long day they had to go through, from the way the ashy grey sky seemed to beckon a chain of unfavourable events after them, to the way Mister Wyatt’s words pulsed behind his temples. Instead of looking at the inside of his eyelids and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, Erwin could see bands and bands of bounty hunters roaming the desert, like bloodhounds trailing after two escaped foxes. A thousand dollars was serious money, a sum that could entice every man with the capacity to hold a gun still and shoot the cans off the table at a local fair to embark on a man hunt, if that could get him closer to the prize.

Only there wasn’t any box of candy apples or a brand new cowboy hat at stake,t was a grand and, more likely than ever, Erwin’s own ass.

 

Something no one in this part of the world seemed to understand was that, even though Levi had trouble with English sometimes, and a little more trouble understanding how things worked around town, he was _not_ a fucking dog. He was more attentive than all those crooked mouthed bastards combined. The reason he knew how important the Fabergé Egg was to Bennett’s wife was because he’d _listened_ and he’d _watched;_ he was attentive. He’d watched the woman slip into her chamber room about six times a day just to make sure the egg was still in the safe kept under her bed - _who even keeps something that important under their bed?! -_. He’d listened to her ‘whisper’ to her sister, her friends, her _governess_ about it, and how special it was.

 _‘Straight from Sankt Petersburg,’_ she’d cooed to Mrs. Maynard, her children’s governess, _‘Cost him a fortune too. But my Clint says I’m no lesser than no Tsarina, oh no.”_

Sankt Petersburg, his ass. No, wait, that wasn’t what was wrong with her claim.

 _Clint says I’m no lesser than no tsarina,_ his ass.

God only knew how she got her hands on the key to the safe to begin with. Maybe she bewitched Clinton into it; that was the only reasonable explanation. There was no way in hell anyone could convince him Clinton, the man who kept his damned vases locked in a separate room and only took them out when very, _very_ important guests were over, entrusted his wife with something as important as that egg. So either his darling was lying, or the egg wasn’t worth shit, in which case it didn’t really make much sense that Levi’s head was now worth a thousand dollars.

The point  was, if she hadn’t thought Levi was the stupid, bumbling, blubbering German buffoon that she thought he was, she wouldn’t have run her mouth. He wouldn’t have stolen the egg.

The same rule applied to Smith and that old mummified man.

He may not have heard much, nor understood whatever he’d managed to catch of their conversation, but he was attentive, and he’d noticed the kind of effect whatever they’d talked about had on Smith. It’d wound him up so tight that Levi thought if he listened closely, he’d soon enough hear one of the man’s bones break. Whatever Mr.White - Wayde, Watt, whatever - had said, it was something serious. Whether it was important or not to him, Levi didn’t really know yet. All he knew was that seeing Smith so flustered was the most amusing scene he’d seen in his entire life. He first caught a glimpse of it at Mr. Wyatt’s, then again at their camp the night before.

When Levi had accidentally jammed his knee into Smith’s crotch.

_Oh, you old, perverted bastard_

Very old. Old enough to be snoring now, when they hadn’t even hit the sack a few minutes ago. Levi watched him, how his back rose and fell with every breath he took, how his shoulders maintained their tense, crumpled appearance even when he was supposed to be fully relaxed now that he’d hit dreamland. He watched the hairs on the back of his neck stand up like the needles of a cactus, ready to stab anyone that came too close. So wary, so tense, even in his sleep.

It made Levi huff, softly enough that Erwin wouldn’t wake.

How could a man who seemed so on edge, so careful to keep out of trouble, so skeptic and scrutinizing, believe that bullshit story Levi made up about his mother and Kenny? According to the last letter he’d received a week before this whole catastrophe, his mother was in better shape than he, himself, was, her tavern doing better than ever - to the point that she’d seen fit to hire a young couple to help her serve the customers. Petra and Aruoulolo? Petra and something Levi couldn’t pronounce. Damned frenchmen. And Kenny? Levi suspected Kenny would be the one burying _him_ after he died at the age of 80. The old shit was immortal. Constipated, but immortal.

And Smith had just gobbled the story up like an idiot. Perverted bastard. Stupid, old, perverted, uptight bastard who probably hadn’t lain with anyone in months. Years, maybe. He reminded Levi of the sailors that came to Stille Brüder, the bordello he’d spent many a night at when he was a bit younger. They’d have to leave their villages, homes, lovers and all, behind for months at a time to make a living. At first glance they seemed to be the men with most resolve, going for so long without the need for human contact. But then, much to Levi’s surprise, they turned out to be the first to crumble upon their return, throwing all that determination out the window and all but pouncing at the nearest prostitute. It was as hilarious as it was pitiful. He almost felt sorry for them; almost felt sorry for Smith. Poor Smith. So wound up and frustrated, to the point Levi made him all but moan just by brushing his knee against him. But if he _could_ make him all but moan by brushing his knee against him….

He bet he could make him cum if he pressed the right way.

After all, he was almost, _almost,_ sorry for him.

Levi let out a quiet sigh, counting Smith’s breaths in his head the way most people would count sheep, or the swings of the pendulum in a grandfather’s clock. Whenever he inhaled, his shoulder blades moved under his skin like knives, rolling muscle and skin tight enough to rip. So tense. The man was so tense. One touch of Levi’s pinkie would be like a needle to a balloon…

He gnawed on the inside of his cheek, his leg restless at his side. One touch. One. Levi moved, the blanket shifted under him with a soft slushing sound as he closed the distance between him and Smith until he could feel the heat radiating off the man to caress Levi’s face. He held his breath, shifting down till his head was at the middle of Erwin’s back. His foot couldn’t quite make contact with Erwin’s, but reached his calf instead. Good enough. Levi pressed his toes against the man’s leg, sliding it up to the back of his knee.  

Levi’s eyes were as big as saucers when he felt the man flinch under his touch. His breath caught in his throat and he didn’t dare move until he was sure that was an involuntary reaction. The last thing he need was for Smith to suddenly elbow him in the face.

But other than that small quiver, Smith remained motionless. That signaled the time to retreat for Levi.

Just as subtly as he launched the attack, Levi rolled back to his place, back once again turned to Smith.

Survival instinct and all that combat knowledge bullcrap, Smith was an easy prey when he wasn’t concentrating.

 _Too easy_ , really.

Levi fell asleep minutes later that night, a self-satisfied smile playing on his lips.

 

The jackrabbit, which was large, brown and plump, had no idea that Erwin was a few steps behind him. The animal was munching carelessly away at still green grass, that would be baked and brown under the merciless sun a few hours later. Erwin began to approach the prey with calculated steps, trying hard not to make the sand screech under his boots.

The morning heat was relentless. Little by little, the oven that was desert Coilha was coming back to life, sending searing white streams of heat beating down on him. It made his shirt stick to his back and arms, soaked in sweat. The same sweat that was slowly dripping down Erwin’s brow and falling into his eyes, making them sting and his vision go all blurry at the edges. He wanted nothing more than to wipe it off on his sleeve, but any sudden move could alert the rabbit that someone malevolent was near.

Hunger was clearly going to win this competition.

Slowly, with an almost fluid move, he brought his right hand to his back pocket, where he kept his hunting knife. One blow, just one fast blow and they would ave something to eat this morning.

He could almost visualize the entire process. He would fetch the knife and throw it at the animal’s back, making it jump off its feet. It would try to escape and stagger for a few moments, maybe crawling into a bush and dying there. Then he would come to take his prize and skin the small animal, just in time to have fresh meat on the menu.

This was child’s play. It seemed like Lady Luck has been nice enough to pay him a visit this morning.

Erwin’s fingers tightened around the handle, as he was fishing the knife out of his pocket. He licked his chapped lips and raised the blade in the air, his wrist moving back to prepare for the pitch.

And then, just as the knife was slipping out of his hand, just when he thought that things were going well for the first time since he’d met Levi…

The boy sneezed.

It wasn’t anything loud - nothing like the thunder he heard from the desert clad men at every salon he stopped by, but just loud enough to make the rabbit snap its head up. It spotted them in under three seconds, and darted for hopeful shelter in even less. Erwin barely had time to shoot Levi an incredulous look before shooting forward on his own feet in hopes of catching what would have been their dinner right now, if the boy had just...not existed.  

Cursing under his breath, Erwin gave chase. The rabbit was very small, and Erwin was very big, but the possibility of him crawling and dragging himself among the clumps of dried weeds was more plausible than ever. The rabbit zigged, and Erwin came around quicker than his own feet allowed him, almost slipping on gravel and spraining his ankle. The rabbit zagged, and made straight across the awaiting dunes. Erwin pelted after him, already suspecting that this was a race he wasn’t going to win.

But the basic instinct of large predators urged him to try harder, already gaining on the rabbit again when the animal dropped into a small hole overgrown with grass and crawling weeds. Smith didn’t need to be told twice what he had to do. He kneeled near the hole and stuck his arm inside of it, ignoring the possibility of rattlesnakes or desert mice resting inside.

His grin cut through his face from ear to ear when he seized the rabbit by its ears, pulling it out of the hole. He then stuffed the knife back into his pocket and closed his fingers around the animal’s neck, snapping its neck with a quick jerk of his hand

One small victory for today, but it was _his_ victory in the face of all the hardship he had been through. Smith took the rabbit back to the camp and dropped it near the still burning fire. He had to find a stick to impale the poor animal with, so it can be skinned and cooked properly, for him and…. _his ever-helping company._

“I caught it,” he said sarcastically, as he passed Levi by in his search for a good stick.

“Fascinating,” Levi sneered back. He eyed the animal with a wrinkled nose and distasteful huff more befitting of a mistress than a thief, “You know it’s crawling with germs, right?”

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.” Erwin threw him a disinterested look and came back to the fire with a narrow acacia branch.

“And give you the satisfaction of watching me wither away and die after _you_ ate all my canned food? Not a chance,” Levi eyed the stick in Erwin’s hand with a cocked brow, “What’s that for? Fire doesn’t need any more branches.”

“But the rabbit does,” Erwin answered and plopped down on the sand, pulling out his knife to sharpen the stick. “I’m not about to throw it in the fire”

Levi was still and silent for a moment, enough for Erwin to finally feel the dull thudding at the back of his skull. He could see the boy from the corner of his eye, just sitting in the same spot on the log by the fire, his arms crossed, and face crumpled as he watched Erwin closely. Whether the look he made was one of concentration or dissatisfaction, Erwin couldn’t be too sure. If he had to put his money on one, it’d be the latter, since the boy was always, but always, dissatisfied with something or another.

“What are you doing?” Levi got up from where he was sitting and came over to Erwin, crouching down by him so close that their knees bumped.

“Makin’ a spear so I can cook the rabbit.” Erwin told him, not taking his eyes from what he was doing.

“Can I try?”

“Try what?”

Levi cleared his throat, and spoke in a gruff voice, “Makin’ a spear so I can cook the rabbit.”

That caught Erwin’s attention. He tilted his chin up and looked at Levi with his eyebrows arched.

“Sure. Go find a branch and get goin’,”

“Can you show me how to do it on the branch you have first?"

Erwin considered that for a moment. Finally, he sighed and gave in, turning around so that Levi could watch him.

“You just hold the stick down and keep the knife inclined on the end. Then you just carve into the wood until it has a sharp end. It’s piece of cake,” he informed Levi.

Levi nodded slowly, all his attention on every move Erwin made, then went to look for a branch as previously instructed. Erwin could hear the leaves of the acacia tree rustling, and then the bushes around it. He rolled his eyes to himself and went back to carving his own stick. The kid was playing around _again._ Would he ever get it through his thick skull that every single thing Erwin was doing wasn’t part of a game? That they actually needed this to _survive_? That didn’t look like something he should hope for any time soon, by the looks of things.  

“Will this one do?” Levi thrusted a stick into Erwin’s face, stopping dangerously close to his eyes, “Good enough?”

Erwin’s head jerked back. He blinked a few times to get his vision adjusted to the object the kid thrusted into his face. 

“Yeah. This will do,” he nodded.

“Can you show me how to do it again?” Levi pulled out the knife in his boot and crouched down uncomfortably close by Erwin again, “I forgot.”

Erwin inhaled deeply and made another cut into the wood, repeating the same motion again and again for Levi to catch it.

“Just make sure not to cut too deep. You just carve it a little,” he said.

Levi followed every move of Erwin’s hand, his entire form still as the tree he’d gotten the branch from. He was looking at him like watching him carve the branch was the most astounding thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was almost unsettling to have those often bored, half lidded eyes now boring into him hard enough to almost burn everything in his hands.

_What the hell is this kid up to this time?_

He shouldn’t have asked, because seconds after, Levi had his palm pressed against the back of Erwin’s hand, his fingers slipping between Erwin’s, around the handle of the knife.

That was a bit more than unsettling. Erwin stopped what he was doing, knife suspended in midair, as he turned his head to look at the kid, eyes wide and confused.

“What is it?” He asked the boy.

“Nothing,” Levi said, “Keep going.”

Erwin’s eyes lingered on the boy’s face for a moment too long, crow’s feet starting to bloom at the corners, as he tried to read any possible sign of mischief on that young face. But the kid was gifted with an idleness that was both useful and irritating, because Smith - _or any other person in his position_ , he thought - couldn’t tell what was going on in Levi’s mind. His gunmetal eyes and thin lips didn’t betray any emotion.

Wasn’t he the luckiest man alive this morning?

“Alright,” he shrugged and moved the blade up and down the stick, bits and ribbons of wood flying around and dropping on the sand between Erwin’s legs.

“Oh, so that’s how hard you should press?” Levi droned, flexing his hand against Erwin’s. “Like that?”

“Yeah.” Erwin rasped and pushed the knife a little too deep into the wood, chopping off a big splinter that fell on top of his right boot, “That’s good”

Levi added nothing, nor did he remove his hand. The contact wasn’t anything exaggerated; he wasn’t gripping or trying to move Erwin’s hand off of its course. It was just _there_ : small, warm, making the back of Erwin’s hand itch and tingle. He wanted to pull it away without making things uncomfortable for either of them.

Erwin breathed, trying to focus on the task at hand and ignore the hand carrying it out. But the boy seemed relentless, set on making every task as difficult as possible. He gripped Erwin’s hand the slightest bit harder and brushed a thumb over the sun stained surface of it.

“Can we try it on mine?” Levi said. Erwin could have sworn he was cooing...  

“Well, yeah. Sure thing, now you know what you have to do,” Erwin replied and reached for the small rabbit lying inches away from his boots. His hand was still in Levi’s soft grip, but he tried his best to focus his attention on the animal that had given him a rough time earlier that morning.

Levi crouched down to pick his own branch up from the ground, then took Erwin’s away, carefully placing it by their boots. Without so much as a thought, he shifted closer to Erwin until he was plastered by his side, and proceeded to bring their intertwined hands to the yet uncarved branch. Levi frowned, pursing his lips and never moving his eyes away from it. He brought the knife in Erwin’s grip to the branch and just barely grazed the stick with its sharp edge.

“Like this?” Levi spoke, just above a whisper.

His tone didn’t horrify Erwin nearly as much as his free hand, which somehow found its way to Erwin’s knee and curled around it.

He almost jumped out of his skin and dropped the rabbit between the two of them when he felt slender fingers wrapping around his knee and squeezing it lightly, If there was a thing Erwin couldn’t get used to, it was sudden human contact. Spending half your life in the wilderness, all by yourself and away from the fast growing signs of civilization, did wonders to your social behaviour, if he had any of that left.

“I have to skin the rabbit,” he informed Levi and raised the animal to his eye level, as if he was keen on proving his point to the kid, “It might get messy”

“Oh…” Levi’s frown deepened, but he made no move to let go or back off, “So you don’t need my branch?”

“I do. And an extra one. We have to tie ’em together so they can hold the rabbit above, you see?” Erwin explained and pointed to the fire with his stick.

“Then shouldn’t we finish the branches first and _then_ deal with the rabbit?” Levi tapped his fingers against Erwin’s knee, “After all, I’m very, _very_ inexperienced at this…”

“We’ve got two done already,” he said and ignored the tapping on his knee, “We just need one more and that’s it.”

He didn’t know how long Levi stared at him, or how long it took for his eyes to turn from the intense, fiery passion they were bubbling with to dull, fishscale greys that’d stuck with them since the beginning of the trip. All he could think of - and be incredibly grateful for - was that the boy let him go with a roll of his eyes, getting back to his feet and snatching the branch from Erwin.

“Sure thing, Opa,” Levi grunted and settled down on the log by the fire again, “You have a good time with your jackrabbit.”

Well, that died down quicker than a pile of leaves on fire. Erwin allowed himself to let out a breath he had no idea he was keeping locked inside his throat, and jumped back to his feet, scurrying to find another branch and get it over with already.

Minutes before ten thirty, the rabbit was steadily roasting above the fire, filling the air with the delicious smell of cooked meat. It made Erwin’s mouth water and his insides grumble with an impatient groan, screaming _food, food, FOOD._ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d clamped his jaws on anything but a spoon after spoonful of canned vegetables. And although he wasn’t one to be ungrateful for any form of nourishment, as anything that kept him on his feet and his mind functioning was more than appreciated, but there was absolutely nothing like tender, mouthwatering meat.

The boy didn’t seem nearly as excited, slumped down against the log with nothing to tell he was alive but the faintly heard breaths he took. Typical enough. Though life on a plantation wasn’t anywhere near what Erwin would call luxurious for anyone but its owners, it was well off enough for the white workers to afford to not worry about getting their three squares every day. Rabbit’s meat was probably the last thing the boy thought of as celebration worthy.   

“Aren’t you hungry?” Erwin called for the boy.

“Hungry enough,” Levi answered, “Never really tasted fresh slaughter before. This should be interesting.”

“Then come take a bite,” Erwin added and took the now completely cooked rabbit off the fire. He then pulled out one of the rabbit’s hind legs and held it out for Levi to come and take it

“Um,” Levi cringed and reached out a reluctant hand to take the offered piece from Erwin.

Levi eyed it for a while, looking like this was the last thing he wanted to do. Erwin thought he’d fling it across the camp for a minute - in which case, Erwin would have to prevent himself from flinging the boy to follow after it. Then, finally, Levi brought it to his lips, taking off the smallest bite Erwin’s ever seen in his entire life, chewing it like he’d just torn of the entire flesh off, and then swallowing without comment.

You could call that an improvement and Erwin was more than satisfied with the result. At least the kid was busying himself with something useful other than pulling tricks on him and ruining his already spoiled mood.

Erwin took big bites of the chunk of meat he had ripped off the rabbit’s body and ate in silence, the echo of Mister Wyatt’s words still ringing into his ears. There was only a matter of time until they would be spotted and mowed down, and since a dead man told no tales, neither did he earn any money.

And that wasn’t Erwin’s most favourite option, especially when he was getting so close to Hatillo, where he could finally find his repayment after four long days of terrible headaches and misadventures.

He’d be damned if he was about to miss that opportunity, army of bounty hunters set after them or not.

“It’s warm,” Levi uttered, nibbling at his rabbit leg.

“Hm?” Erwin hummed, after his train of thought was suddenly interrupted, “Well, yeah, it’d been on fire for a while.”

“No, I mean it’s more...that warmth of a freshly killed body? That kind of warm. Blood warm.”

“That’s how game tastes. It has its special flavour,” Erwin said and looked up at Levi, before he dug his teeth into the tender flesh and ripped it off the bone.

“Can’t argue with that. Everything has its special flavour,” Levi said, “It sure doesn’t taste like any beans, corn, or cock I’ve tasted up till now. Don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing.”

What Levi said almost made Erwin spit out his mouthful of meat. Just when he thought the kid had finally stopped fooling around with him, it dawned on him that those earlier silent moments were just the calm before the storm.

That surely was a bite hard to chew.

“It’s _cake._ You are talkin’ about cake, kid,” Erwin finally swallowed and corrected Levi

Levi cocked a brow at Erwin, “That’s what I said.”

“That’s definitely not…” On second thought, Erwin wasn’t that sure he was willing to stretch this conversation more, “Nevermind. Eat your food”

“Do you,” Levi took another bite and chewed slowly, “by any chance, have a thing for acting like people’s emotionless father? And, if so, were you born with that thing or did it grow on you over the years?”

“You’re wasting food, kid. Food I had to work hard for. If you don’t feel like eatin’, then put it back and that’s it.”

“God damn ungrateful kid,” Levi said in his mocking gruff impression of Erwin, “Giving me lip when all I do is work my ass off to make sure he doesn’t hit the hay with an empty stomach. All I do is _provide_ for this family, and this is the thanks I get.”

Erwin only rolled his eyes and let out a small exasperated sound, as he continued munching on his meat like the boy wasn’t even there.

He already had a lot to plan for the day blooming ahead of them, so he might as well create some peace of mind for himself.

“It’s like you’re Kenny’s younger, slightly less shitty looking, blonde American cousin,” Levi continued. “Lighten up a little, won’t you? Won’t do your ticker good to keep burning yourself up over every little thing I say.”

“I am as bright as a kerosene lamp, kid. Don’t break a sweat over me.” Erwin stood up and showed Levi a forced smile, before he went to put out the fire.

Levi drew his knees to his chest, lowering his hands by his sides and setting what was left of his meal on the log.

“Don’t look much like it,” He grumbled, then nodded to the fire, “So was that rabbit supposed to be breakfast?”

Erwin shrugged. Breakfast or early lunch meal, the rabbit felt like a blessing, both to his tired mind and aching stomach. He tied the blankets back to the saddle and turned to the kid, walking to the log he was sitting on. Erwin crouched down right in front of him, grabbing his sun-burnt face and turning it to each side to analyze how much damage was caused by the ruthless heat. He then scooped up a handful of soft clay from under the log and smeared it over the boy’s cheeks and forehead, trying to cover as much exposed skin as he could.

Taking one last look at his handiwork, Erwin stood up and took off his cowboy hat, putting it on top of Levi’s head.

“Eat the rest of your food and start movin’,“ he said and walked back to his horse.  

“Did you just--” Levi gasped and spluttered, bringing a hand up to his face. His eyes widened in horror and he shot Erwin the most distressed look. “Is this _mud?! ON MY FACE?!”_

He stood on quaking legs and stumbled after Erwin to his horse, grappling for something or another in his bags.

“Ach du lieber Himmel!” Levi said, looking like two seconds away from dropping dead, “jemine! Ojemine!”

Erwin’s head jerked to the direction the boy’s shrieking voice was coming from. Much to his surprise, Levi was fumbling with one of his bag’s straps, trying to pull something out of it.

“What on earth are you tryin’ to do, kid?” Erwin asked, and put a hand on Levi’s shoulder, pulling him away from his horse.

“What does it look like?! I'm look for something to wipe this shit off!”

“If you wipe ‘that shit’ off, your skin might come off with it too”

“What the hell does that even _mean?”_

“It means the sun will burn your skin off. The more you walk around exposed, the more it starts bubbling up and eventually bursting. The mud is for protection, kid”

“But it's filthy!” Levi said, “It could be horse shit, for all you know!”

“Well, if it takes a bit of horse shit to keep you alive and not disfigured, then I’d be more than happy to put it on my face, if I were you,” Erwin concluded and crossed his arms over his chest.

What happened after convinced Erwin of the boy’s outstanding ability at both conveying and concealing his emotions in those eyes of his; one second he was completely emotionless, the next he was on the verge of crying, and now? Now he looked about ready to burn Erwin where he stood with the amount of venom spitting out of his eyes.

Erwin cocked a brow at Levi, silently daring him to pull another stunt or throw another tantrum. He didn't know whether or not Levi picked on the unspoken consequences and decided to behave, or that he just couldn't think of anything to do at the moment. In any case, it saved Erwin the heartache of having to work through more of the kid’s problems, and he was more than glad to see him stomp his way to his horse and go through the classic show of waddling onto the saddle.

Tantrum aside, they started drifting again, the desert awaiting for them with its arms open, enticing any bold wanderer to try their luck and survive the scorching heat, deadly animals, and even their own minds playing tricks on them when dehydration settled it.

Erwin’s horse began his journey once again, leading the way to a different route, but with the same destination at the end of it.

If the boy only knew.

 

_______________________________

Levi didn’t sleep last night. Not a wink, not a second of peace; his night was filled with tossing and turning, like his entire body was on fire, and, in a way, it was. It had been ever since Schmidt had splashed his face with rotting, slimy mud, forcing him to spend the rest of that day smelling of wet wood with a budding rash on his cheeks and forehead.

It’d taken all of his resolve not to wipe it off on his shirt - or claw his face off altogether. That would have been worse, he continued telling himself. If he’d wiped it off, then he’d have to spend the entire trip wearing a muddy shirt because they barely had enough water to drink, let alone wash themselves and their clothes. He already had enough dirt coating every inch of him, sticking to his once white shirt, his vest, his pants. He wouldn’t be surprised to find sand in his undergarments.  

Levi hadn’t touched his face at all, busying himself with staring at the back of Schmidt’s head and imagining a bullet blasting through it. And as much as he’d wanted to hiss and spit all his venom at the man, he’d kept his mouth shut and let any question Irvin threw at him roll right off his shoulders like the grains of sand that blew over them as night began to peak into the sky. It wasn’t because he was in any way afraid of Schmidt, because he _wasn’t_. He just knew that no amount of cursing and screeching was going to get any results with the man who had the face of an old mutt. No, Schmidt needed special treatment if Levi wanted to get what he needed from him without wasting any time.

He should have shot him when he’d had the chance.

Now, after half a day of silence and one full night of bubbling, silent rage, his horse clopped after Irvin, the air around them starting to sweat out the heat it’d accumulated over the day. All that was swimming through his mind were ways to get Irvin screaming by the end of the week. At least, he hoped so. Why did he have to get stuck with someone so infuriatingly annoyed with life that he’d just stopped caring about anything it cared to throw at him?

Levi looked up at the sky, watching the clouds above them roll in red, orange, and gold. It was just about dark enough for them to start planning on a place to spend the night, but Smith didn’t look like he was going to stop any time soon.

“Are we going to stop tonight?” Levi croaked, scratching at his hair under the oven like hat Schmidt had forced onto his head. The damned thing was like a furnace, suffocating Levi’s head. How did Schmidt go on wearing it so long? It made every strand of Levi’s hair itch. “Or are you planning on falling asleep and riding into the nearest pit?”

“We have to find a crevasse first,” Irvin finally spoke, dragging his horse along the path to more red cliffs awaiting in the distance, “It’s less cold between the rocks”

Of course. Schmidt always had something or another to say, always had a perfectly reasonable reply to throw in Levi’s face. For all Levi knew, they could be lost and going in circles, Schmidt being far too prideful to admit it. Less cold between the rocks, his ass. Mud protects your skin from the sun, his ass.

Levi huffed to himself and followed without another word. There would be enough time for them to talk that night, and Levi would make sure every single minute of it was part of the most uncomfortable experience Irvin has ever been through.

 

They finally settled for a dusty, narrow trail between the ‘Twin Rocks’, two massive chains of copper cliffs that stretched in a perfect parallel line. Due to their winding course, the rocks allowed the last rays of sunset to sneak between every ridge and splinter carved in the stone.

The setting was mesmerising, bathing both of them in blood-orange light, as the sun began to slowly disappear behind the never ending dunes and painting the evening sky with a violent shade of purple.

Erwin let the bag with the two blankets hit the ground, too tired to do anything else but drag his feet to a small flat rock and sit on it. He dug his hand inside of his trench coat and fished for the crumpled pack of cigarettes. After he had found it, he stuck one between his lips and lit it, inhaling deeply and letting the clouds of smoke escape into the air above him.

The day had exhausted him both mentally and physically, and he needed a bit of time to gather his bearings and put his thoughts in correct order. Much to his relief, the kid had been quiet for most of the time, only his scornful attitude yelling from the top of its lungs. It was a hushed scream, at least, and Erwin was given the chance to pull at his tired muscles and mind in silence.

He could almost feel the arms of sleep wrapping around him and pulling at his shoulders, a blissful and much awaited escape from the daggers of the desert heat and the growing paranoia that had followed him since he left Wyatt’s shop.

Heavy eyelids were halfway closed and the cigarette slipping from his fingers when he felt a spark of pain suddenly ignite in his back, making him jump on his feet and curse under his breath.

“ _Son of a whore!”_  Erwin cursed under his breath and his left arm automatically darted to his right shoulder blade, trying to reach the source of his pain.

That was no dreaming in technicolor due to the exhaustion or a sudden muscle spasm; he had been bitten by something.

Something that could be lethal, if his current luck had been kind enough to strike again.

 

Levi jumped in his place by his horse. He was just starting to let down his bags and prepare his horse for another night, all his attention focused on picturing Schmidt’s spine in place of the knots he was untying when he suddenly heard a loud hiss coming from the man’s direction. He turned to see Schmidt grappling for his shoulder, cursing and all but spinning around himself like a dog chasing its tail. Levi would’ve been amused had it….oh, forget it. This was about the most amusing thing he’d seen in a few days. 

Levi turned to Schmidt without taking his hands off what he was doing, “Let me guess, you forgot your gun back at your little powder room stop?”

“Somethin’ fuckin’ bit me,” Erwin hissed in return. There was no use stretching his arm at an odd angle, unless he wanted a sore muscle in the morning.

The fatal possibility that a scorpion or a venomous centipede had bitten him was becoming more and more plausible. Finally, Erwin followed his gut feeling and began pulling at his clothes, getting rid of the trench coat and almost prying the shirt off of himself until he got to his undergarments and unbuttoned their upper half, pulling them over his shoulder, his chest and back now exposed to the chilly air.

He felt like kicking himself to the moon and back for being caught in such an embarrassing position, but Erwin had no choice other than asking Levi for help.

“Don’t just stand there like I’m part of the circus, kid. Give me a hand!”

“Help?” Levi snorted, turning to fully face Schmidt, “What am I supposed to do? Un-bite yo--”

The last word caught in Levi’s throat like a fishbone. Schmidt was standing in the middle of their campsite, still clawing for the bitten spot on his back with an expression that was nothing short of utter despair, his ever towering form burned under the setting sun and casting a ghostly shadow the way he always did. Had these been the regular circumstances, Levi would’ve felt immense pleasure at the man’s distress. But, during regular circumstances, Irvin’s towering form wasn’t missing the upper half of its attire.

Up until that moment, Levi had thought them not being able to bathe regularly as he was used to back home and at the plantation was the worst thing that could happen. Now, however, as he stared at Schmidt digging holes into the ground with his panicked stomping, completely unaware of the way the sun’s remnants cast shadow into every dip of his abdomen, under the line just beneath his chest, caressing his neck and the curve of his shoulder, Levi wasn’t so sure keeping their clothes on was such a bad idea after all. Dear lord, how did Schmidt even manage to hide so much muscle under his shirt without having it rip open? No amount of cloth in a regular man’s shirt seemed capable of accommodating those shoulders, or that chest, or that toned back...

Levi’s eyes blinked like broken shutters, his throat constricting to the point he started suspecting _he_ was the one bitten by a scorpion or a snake or whatever Schmidt thought had filled its belly with his blood. He turned back to the horse and took in a deep breath, trying to drag his thoughts back to their normal course.

 _Fuck, now what?_ Levi bit his lip hard enough to almost taste blood. What was he supposed to tell the man now? That he couldn’t help because he was afraid he’d end up unconsciously taking a bite of his own on those glorious golden shoulders? Or maybe because he’d accidentally end up stabbing Schmidt with something else--

_STOP._

“Looks fine from here,” Levi cleared his throat and gave his horse an awkward pat on the neck. “Stop acting like a barmaid and pull yourself together already. Lord, this is ridiculous.”

 

“Kid, something **_fuckin_ ** _’_ bit me. In the desert.” Erwin repeated the same anxious sentence, trying to slow his erratic heartbeats down, “If it’s a Deathstalker scorpion, then I am burnt meat and you too, since you can’t make it in the desert alone.”

He made it back to the flat rock he had been previously dozing off on, picking what was left of his cigarette from the ground and lighting it again. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt a stronger need to gulp down as much alcohol as he needed to become numb.

_If only the bloody kid could move faster and do something useful at once._

“Cooperate this time, _please_ . _”_

 

Levi heard his brain take one deep breath and then unleash a loud, long, sustained scream that made his skull ring. He forced himself to turn and look at Schmidt, struggling to maintain his flat expression despite the unending roaring in his head. Schmidt didn’t know how lucky he was that he couldn’t hear it, unlike every one of Levi’s bones as he dragged himself, step after agonizing step, to the man.

His eye twitched, his knees screeching as he bent down behind Irvin to look at where he had been frantically clawing just seconds ago. The bastard even had the audacity of lighting up that dirty cigarette again. Wasn’t it cruel enough that Levi had to see one of the people he hated most in life bask in a body that should, and usually did, belong to the marble statues Mistress Bennett made her servants polish six times a day? Now he had to come stare at them up close, watch the tendons roll under freckled skin with every move Irvin’s hand made. The screaming in Levi’s head turned up a few octaves, his eyes blurred at every perfectly placed freckle, brown stars dusting a golden sky.

He should have shot Schmidt in the head when he’d had the goddamn chance.

“Where is it?” Levi croaked, fighting to keep his hands clutched at his sides.

“On my right shoulder blade,” Erwin answered, shaking one of his restless legs and taking long drag after long drag of his cigarette, “or just below it. Somewhere I can’t reach.”

“Yeah,” Levi breathed, “Sure...what am I looking for?”

“A small bump or somethin’,” he answered impatiently, “or a rash, I don’t know. Depends on what bit me.”

“Right, right,”

Levi squinted at Irvin’s back. All he could see were freckles, freckles, and maybe a beauty mark? No, that was another freckle. There didn’t even seem to be any redness anywhere that he could see. The man was perfect, bodywise, at least.

Levi reached out a reluctant hand to Irvin’s back, pressing his fingers to it. His breath hitched in his throat when he dragged them along the impossibly smooth surface of Irvin’s back, over the dull jut of his shoulder blade. It felt like running his hand over silk.

“Here?” He murmured, never taking his eyes away from Irvin’s back.

“Press a little harder.”

“Harder,” Levi might as well drop dead there and then, “Like this?”

 

Erwin couldn’t exactly feel anything in particular. Only a faint tingling sensation from the boy’s small fingers pressing into his back.

What if it was a scorpion and that part was now numb?   _Fan-fucking-tastic._

“Harder”

Levi screwed his eyes shut and pressed his thumb as hard as he could into Irvin’s shoulder, “Better?!”

He still couldn’t feel any pressure on his shoulder blade, but he was damn sure he had been bitten or stung, and if he couldn’t feel any pulsing pain, or, _at least,_ the pressure of the kid’s fingers on his skin, then that part of his body was numb.

And if the worst was proven to be right and there was a scorpion’s nest somewhere near them, then the kid had to do the impossible and suck the venom out of the fang mark.

_Everything was going absolutely perfect._

Erwin sucked in a deep breath and turned his head over his shoulder, looking straight into Levi’s eyes.

“Listen to me, kid. A scorpion’s nest might be nearby our camp. If that’s the case, then we’re in big shit. _Both of us._ Do you have any open wounds inside your mouth?”

“What? No, I’m pretty sure I’d know if a scorpion crawled into and _stung_ my fucking mouth, Schmidt.”

“That’s fantastic. Now pay attention to what I say. _If_ this is a scorpion sting, then you’ll have to suck the venom out of it, understand?”

“I….what?” Levi’s eye twitched, “Suck it out with what?”

Erwin dropped the cigarette bud and bit hard on his knuckles.

“With your mouth, kid. You make a cut over the sting mark and put your lips on it. Then you start suckin’.“

Levi’s eyes blew as wide as saucers, his face draining of color as he glanced from Erwin to the supposed sting and back to Erwin.

“You want me to put my lips on it, and start sucking,” Levi began in a calm voice, “What kind of whorehouse did you hit your head against on the way?!”

“I am dead serious, kid. We don’t know for sure if we have deadly crawlers around, but if there are, you have to do that”

 

Levi couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Maybe it was all the heat he’d gathered from the minute he’d taken to the desert, still lingering in his bones like a disease, turning sick fantasy into an even sicker delusion. Schmidt had just asked him to not only press his hands into his back as though they were in a cheap, paperback erotica, but also suck out what? He hadn’t really paid much attention to anything he’d said after that. Something about scorpions and birds nests. 

He couldn’t really tell whether this day was getting better, or worse by the second.

“I--okay, yeah, sure, I can do that,” Levi shot to his feet, and hurried off in a random direction. “Scorpions. You want scorpions? I’ll go look for scorpions.”

Levi scurried around, his mind darting in a hundred different directions. How was he supposed to find that nest when he had no idea what it looked like? Was it like a bird’s nest? Was he supposed to look for it on trees? At least he knew now that what he’d said before about Schmidt was right. He was the worst travel guy in existence, and was probably well on the route of getting them both killed.

Good minutes had passed since Erwin heard anything from the kid, He was surely taking his time, in the middle of a desperate situation that didn’t allowed  any beating around the bush.

Smith sighed and ran a hand over his face.

“It’s a hole in the ground, kid. A small hole in the ground near where we sittin’.“ He called after the boy.

“I knew that,” Levi snapped back, “I can’t find a ‘small hole in the ground’. There’s nothing here, but sand, sand, and guess what? More fucking san--Heidenei, I found it!”

 

Erwin felt his heart drop into his stomach when he heard the boy chirping happily. He slowly got up on unsure feet and walked over to the place in the ground the boy was pointing at, crouching right next to Levi.

What he had expected to be a fat, yellow Deathstalker scorpion, was instead a small mound, brimming with Fire ants.

“Those are ants, kid,” Erwin was awestruck, his voice barely a whisper. 

Levi frowned at the anthill, leaning down with his hands on his knees for a closer look.

“Oh...guess an ant bit you then,” Levi mumbled, then promptly straightened up and stalked past Erwin back to the rock they were planted against a few minutes ago, “You threw a show over a fucking ant, Schmidt. An entire circus performance for a fucking ant!”

Once again, ever since they started the journey, Erwin found that his tongue felt as heavy as lead and he was in no mental state of giving the kid an equally snarky remark.

Instead, he buttoned up his onesie again and pulled down his pants, planning on putting a wet compress on the bump and going to sleep before the sun completely set.

 

The only good thing Levi Ackerman got out of the past two dreadful days was a solid, easy to remember definition of the word “nightmare”. The word and the images that came with it were etched on the back of his eyelids like tattoos from hell, damning him to an eternity of seeing Schmidt in every corner of his desire fueled fantasies. _Schmidt,_ who looked like he didn't know water could be used _on_ bodies and not just in them. Schmidt, who was about as lively as the dead possum Kenny used to scare him with when he was ten. Schmidt, who'd managed to boil Levi’s blood more in the past week than anyone else did in his entire life.

All he used to tell himself whenever the urge to claw the man’s eyes out clawed at his own skull was that Schmidt wasn’t worth it. Schmidt was nothing more than a filthy, uncivilized idiot who’d almost gotten them killed with his horrible guiding skills. But now it meant that Levi couldn't sleep at night since his entire body was flushed and flaming because of a filthy, uncivilized idiot. It meant Levi had to drag his blanket to the other side of the camp and suffer the smell of horse shit just to make sure he didn't end up doing anything stupid because of a filthy, uncivilized idiot.

Of all the shitty, shitty things Schmidt had done to him - coming out of nowhere and demanding he follow him, the berries, the gun - this was by far the worst. Who the hell did he think he was? Flipping the table altogether so he thought _Levi_ would be the sexually deprived one?

 _Maybe that was it,_ Levi bunched the blankets in his fists, _Maybe Schmidt picked up on your plan to try and tease him, so he full on lost it and decided to TAKE HIS FUCKING SHIRT OFF?_

He was going to gut him, Levi decided, as the sun stretched its light across the sky. His eyes burned, his body felt like a sack of wet sand, and his mind was full of cotton. This was the second night in a row Schmidt had cost him some good rest, but Levi was damned set on it being the last. If Schmidt wanted to play _that_ dirty just to keep Levi in place, then he would grant him that small victory. Frankly, all he wanted at the moment was to get to Farlan’s shack like home in George Town and then swim his way to Germany if he had to.

Schmidt and this entire country could go to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments are much appreciated! Tell us what you think.
> 
> Coming up next: Things finally get saucy when Erwin goes through the final stage of sexual tension: "Fuck it"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey again! 
> 
> Horribly sorry for the long wait! We had some techinical difficulties with this chapter lol. We have two more chapters written and awaiting editing, and so those will be uploaded within the following two weeks hopefully (and then probably reuploaded because finicky grammatical and punctuation issues which the lovely, love, lovely [Ravenreux ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreux)  
> always helps us with -She is awesome, please go check her work pretty pls-). 
> 
> Hopefully the boom-chicka-wow-wow in this chapter will make up for the wait~
> 
> Just to make things clear: said Boomchikawowow is consented to by both ADULT characters (Levi is 20, Erwin is in his thirties), and yes Erwin is pissed because Levi might have pulled a lot of shit with him but, again, whatever sexual acts described here are consented to. No rape. No dubious consent. Everyone's fine, folks. 
> 
> ALSO CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING ART as part of the snkminibang ITS FUCKING AMAZING OKAY WE CRY: 
> 
> \- [Art by Acrknowyou](https://acrknowyou.tumblr.com/post/149812055866/drawing-made-for-the-snkminibang-make-sure-you)  
> \- [Art by Sayloni](https://sayloni.tumblr.com/post/150093821233/i-got-to-work-with-some-amazing-writers-for-the)  
> 

Erwin dreamt of rain that night. He was in the middle of a downpour, shirt soaked and clinging to his body, while heavy clouds had gathered above the endless dunes and the burning sand, the sky roaring with thunder and breaking in half. Heavy droplets fell on him and his horse, and he couldn’t do anything but stare in awe and succumb to the force of nature.

It felt so vivid, his surroundings bursting into an explosion of blue and white, like the climate had changed only for Erwin and washed him away in a powerful torrent.

But when he opened his eyes and faced the searing white light of the sun, his mouth as dry as the road they had marched on for days, Erwin realised that whatever fell on him like a summer rain was actually hot and sticky. Bewildered and still numb with sleep, he brought a hand to his face and tapped his cheek, only to find a thick, brownish liquid staining his face. Out of instinct, Erwin put his fingers into his mouth and tasted beans. Gelatinous, salty bean sauce, instead of rain water.

As his confusion grew stronger by the moment, Erwin propped himself on his elbows and looked left and right, to find the source of his new found distress. And, just as expected, it was none other than the kid, shuffling around like a headless chicken, his shirt soaked with the same sticky fluid that’d rained down on Erwin’s face.

“What are you doin’?” Erwin rasped, his voice still heavy with sleep.  
  
The boy’s upper body snapped around to face Erwin so quickly that he could’ve sworn he heard his slim spine crack. The bewildered, caught-in-the-act look he had on his face wasn’t much unlike that of the jackrabbit when it’d caught up on Erwin sneaking up on it. Except this jackrabbit’s eyes were faintly bruised and swollen, the rest of his sharp face ashen and only colored by the splatter of reddish brown sauce that’d once coated the beans.

“I was--” The boy spluttered, his arms flailing as he explained, “I wanted to make breakfast, and it just...it blew up! The cheapass shit Blew. Up!”

Erwin blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the powerful sunlight and the current reality of their situation. He combed his fingers through his hair and slowly got up, heading to the kid and what seemed to be their last can of food.

“That’s all we had left?” he asked, hoping that the answer would be in their favour.

“Yeah,” Levi breathed, bringing an unsteady hand up to wipe the sticky sauce off his face, “I think I still have some cake left...but that’s the last can.”

“Oh, for the love of God…” Erwin breathed and ran both his hands through his hair. That was exactly what they needed while they were miles away from civilization or any source of supplies and fresh water.

It seemed like he had to help himself and the kid again, and hunting was the only valid option, other than cannibalism and starving to death in the desert.

Without a second thought, he turned back to his sleeping place and gathered his belongings, getting ready to find any source of nourishment that could keep them alive until they hit Hatillo.

“You stay ‘ere and clean up. I’ll go find something to eat, alright?” He turned to the kid and pulled up his pants.

“Fine,” Levi waved a hand off at Erwin and headed off to his horse, “Not like I have anything better to do in this shithole.”

Erwin didn’t cast the boy another glance. If they wanted to get anything going today, they had to move fast and already ensure their food for the day, unless they wanted to drop off their horses and die of a heat-stroke. Taggin along the dusty trail between the two massive rock chains, Erwin lost his trace behind the cliff, in search for a rabbit, or a Javelina, if they were lucky enough.

 

“Fucking Bennett,” Levi muttered under his breath as he slipped off his vest and the shirt under it, holding it up in the blinding white sun to inspect the damage done to it by his disastrous breakfast attempt, “Fucking Bennett and his fucking cheapass beans.”

Had he been back home, or anywhere near a store that sold so much as rags in decent enough condition, then he’d bury the shirt under a rock he sat on now. He couldn’t, of course. There wasn’t any civilization as far as the eye could see. He hadn’t had half the mind to pack an extra shirt before he’d run away either. The dream of wearing a clean shirt for the rest of the journey would just have to be buried along with the rest of all the hopes and dreams he’d had before he’d first set foot in Arizona.

Levi groaned, looking down at the rock currently cooking his ass through the thin cotton of his pants. It was his own fault for trying to be helpful and make breakfast instead of letting Schmidt deal with it like he was being paid to do. All that had done for them was waste the last can of food they had, and ruin an already ruined shirt if that was even possible.

He lowered the shirt with a sigh. This was the second night he’d spent fighting for dominance with his blanket instead of try and get any sleep. He had to say he was surprised he hadn’t ended up digging a trench under himself with all the tossing and turning that’d occurred the night before. All Schmidt’s fault, as per usual. Because try as he could, he just couldn’t dig the image of the man’s shoulders rolling under the golden glow of the sunset, couldn’t go back to viewing Schmidt as nothing more than the disgusting thug he was. What had tormented him more than anything, however, weren’t the things he’d seen so much as those he hadn’t. His mind had spent the night putting images to every inch of Schmidt’s covered skin, carving out toned thighs, perfect calves, sculpted...nether regions. It was disgusting.

Disgusting enough to have him staring at Schmidt in pitch black darkness, trying to make out something, anything of the man with from his place at the opposite side of the campsite. It’d done little more than to frustrate him further and send him into a frenzy of hissed curse words and threatening to strangle himself should his mind not grant him sleep. And when the sun started peeking over the horizon, grinning sadistically as it announced another night stolen right from his eyes, he’d decided to dull his tiredness with something useful and cook breakfast for them; show Schmidt he was actually good at something and that he could make do on his own just fine.

Well, he grumbled in his mind, like Kenny used to say: At least no one died.

Even though it was borderline horrifying how many times he’d had to remember those words in the past week.

 

  
Erwin trudged along the way back to the camp with laboured breathing. To say he looked like a mess was a bit of an understatement. His once light blue shirt was soaked in blood, one of the lapels hanging out of his jeans. A suspender snapped in half, swinging next to Erwin’s hips with every heavy step he made.

A few feet behind him, what looked like a small wild boar followed, all tied up and pretty much dead. Erwin dragged the game after him, pulling at the ragged strand of rope that he used to wrap up and transport the animal.

His rubbed raw arms betrayed a long struggle to defeat the wild animal, and the blood that gused out from its sliced throat flew on Erwin’s clothes, although most of it was used to shield his face from the powerful sun. It was warm and the slightest bit disgusting, but there was no room for complaining when you had a job to do and two hungry bellies to feed.

Erwin had found the young Javelina grazing peacefully at what little dried vegetation he could find among the rocks. He had approached it stealthily, his nerves wired at the maximum and palms sweaty, almost slipping off the gun. It wasn’t common to find a boar that easily, especially when they usually slept during the hot hours of the morning and only came out of their hiding when the afternoon was slowly setting in.

The animal had been feeding with its back to Erwin, its head bowed down, giving him not much of a choice but to shoot it in his hind legs. That being said and done, he fired his gun and caught it by surprise, its right hind leg having been blown to smithereens. But desert animals weren’t easy to kill, and the young Javelina went for its life, sprinting away from Erwin as best it could. Needles to say, it had taken a bit of a fight to put the animal down without causing it anymore pain than necessary by shooting his legs or back, and Erwin had to crawl above it, eventually cutting its throat and finishing the deed.

Now that he thought about it, he’d grown sick and tired of eating beans every two meals. And not having the kid around to spoil his cover and adding extra effort to the hunt, he was proud to say he did a pretty clean job. Without any irony attached to it.

After a twenty minute walk, Erwin made it back to the camp, dragging the boar near the still burning campfire. It hit the ground as soon as he let the rope fall from his hand and pushed his fingers through his hair, only to leave behind a trail of dried blood flakes among the blonde strands.

 

Levi was fighting the urge to fall asleep where he sat, lest he slumped forward into the crackling fire -the only good thing that he'd managed to get out of breakfast. His eyelids felt like they were stuffed with lead, rolling over his eyes every few seconds and tilting his entire body forward before he was startled by something or the other and snapped awake again. He didn’t know how he’d manage to get on his horse in this condition. He could always tell Schmidt he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t ‘drift’ today. But then when had that worked? He’d left a trail of his stomach’s contents on their way to Mr.Wyatt’s shack like a disgusting version of Hänsel und Gretel, because Schmidt thought staying back for a while would be a waste of time.

He’d just have to bare through it. Again.

Just as Levi’s mind was halfway into conjuring a dream, he heard shuffling, and then woke up startled at a dull thud when something hit the ground. He blinked up at the source of the shuffling, a shadow cast over him from where it towered over him.

It was, to no one’s surprise, Schmidt again, back from whatever he’d gone. All Levi could see was the faint outline of Schmidt’s face, the rest of him shrouded in shadow. Only his outline was illuminated by stark sunlight that glowed especially around his head like a weird halo.

“Where the heck did you run off to?” Levi grunted, bringing a hand up to shield his face from the sun.

“Huntin’.” Irvin mumbled and kept his back to Levi, still too preoccupied with skinning the animal.

Levi rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and shook his head, trying to throw the sleepiness from it. He squinted at the...thing Irvin was busy ripping the life off of, and cringed. As if the rabbit hadn’t been enough.

“What even is that?” Levi leaned down, resting his elbows on his knees as he eyed Schmidt’s hands.

When the sun’s glare had finally begun to fade from his eyes, he started noticing something glinting off of the man’s hands; something red and sticky. Was that blood? Now that he could see clearly, he noticed that it spread all the way up to the man’s elbows, coating it in huge blotches. It was also splattered over his shirt, damaging it far worse than the beans had Levi’s own clothes. And his hair, and his face, and a little on his pants were also flecked with coppery fluid.

“Mein Gott,” Levi murmured, “Did you shower in its guts or what?”

“Had a bit of a rough time with this little fella. But it turned out fine,” he answered and continued cleaning the boar.

“Wouldn’t say it was completely fine,” Levi frowned, “Your shirt’s completely ruined.”

Not that Levi minded much.

The thought made his stomach turn.

This wasn’t just regular Schmidt. Not the man who seemed so proud of that old muddy trench coat, as though it were made of gold, the one who didn’t seem to mind sleeping anywhere or on anything. This was Schmidt splashed and splattered with blood. Levi could smell the coppery scent emitting off of him. And his golden hair, peppered with dried flakes of red, was poking in a hundred different directions. His face, from forehead to jaw to brow, was drenched in sweat. It should’ve made Levi cringe. It should have made him scurry off to the other side of camp and threaten to stab the man if he came anywhere near him. But it didn’t, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the sight of Schmidt in the state he was in now, sparked that same uncomfortable attraction that’d bubbled within him back when he’d had to check the man’s ant bite.

What, in the name of god almighty, was happening to him?

“Hope you don’t have troubles eatin’ fat meat in the mornin’. It does a better job keepin’ you on your feet than beans.”

Erwin had finished skinning and cutting portions of the boar. After that, he turned completely to Levi and handed him a big chunk of meat, still hanging safely from its bone.

“Keep it above the fire. It needs time to roast, you know?”

“Yeah…” Levi carefully pushed the slab of revoltingly red meat back to Schmidt, “I already ate whatever I had left. You keep that, and maybe get yourself cleaned up.” Or don’t…

Erwin narrowed his eyes at the boy, insisting on giving him the meat.

“Don’t leave me with my arm hangin’, boy. Take it and eat”

Was it just him, or was Schmidt’s voice incredibly attractive when he was being an insistent asshole?  
  
The sun. It was the sun. It was doing weird things to his mind. He shouldn’t have sat on that toasting warm rock for as long as he did. It fried his brain good. That and the fact his eyes were so fucking heavy.

Levi snatched the bone from Irvin’s hand, ignoring every inch of his body screaming because he was holding slimy, filthy wet animal chunks in his hand.

“You should still do something about that blood,” Levi said, “It smells like shit.”

Erwin nodded and sprang back on his feet. He left the rest of the game untouched and walked over to his horse, pulling one of the flasks out of his bag. He poured a bit of water into his palm and rubbed his face clean, the dried blood dripping down his chin in small rivulets.

Getting done with the tidying up and grooming, Erwin followed the most basic instinct of every living, breathing creature on Earth. Hunger.

“We’re gonna spend the day campin’ “ he let Levi know, while holding his own chunk of meat above the campfire.

“Mmhm,” Levi couldn’t get his eyes to stop staring at Schmidt’s jaw. The beautiful cut of Schmidt’s jaw, that was, and how the sun hit him just right, painting him with shadows and crisp light. Oh yes, Levi’s mind was well fucked indeed.

He shook his head, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from Schmidt and focus on the meat. Meat, tough, chewy. He would be better off focusing on sinking his teeth in that, since the crumbs of cake he’d had hadn’t done much to appease his stomach. He should think of the meat, and not how he would be more than happy to sink a bruise just at the base of Schmidt’s jaw if he’d let him.

“How’s that ant bite?” Levi croaked, “Still giving you trouble, I hope.”

“It burns most of the time,” Erwin said, and moved his eyes to Levi, “Fire ants are pretty aggressive”

“You shouldn’t itch it,” Levi added, “That usually makes shit worse.”

“I try not to. I have to soak the compress again anyway. A real pain in the ass”

“I can help with that, if you want,” Levi blurted before he could stop himself, “To...make up for soaking you in beans.”

“ ‘s fine, kid. Maybe after we find the stream. I sup’ose we both need a clean-up”  
  
“Yeah, stream. Where the shit are you supposed to find a stream in the middle of the desert?”

“Where there’s water flowing, there’s life” Erwin said and nodded contently, as if he was agreeing with his own assertion, “There’s a river around here, somewhere North-West. The Natives call it the Rawerk Run”

Levi held back a long sigh of relief. The words did more to boost his morale than Schmidt could ever know. It was a wonder what the thought of water, fresh and clean and crisp against his dry, dirty, sunburnt skin, did to him. It was as if the past days in all their shitty glory hadn't happened at all. He was relieved, content, even -dare he say it- happy.

Levi brought his hand to his eyes again, rubbing the drowsiness out of them, “That's good. That's real good”.

“Yeah. We also need to refill the flasks,” Smith added and wrinkled his nose, as he brought his hand to the small bump on his shoulder blade and scratched at it.

“Yeah,” Levi eyed Schmidt for a second before adding, “I bet my mom would know what to do about that bite. Make it go away in seconds. That woman does wonders...why don't I write her and we can spend a couple of months waiting for the reply before you end up chewing your shoulder off?”

Erwin thought he didn’t hear the boy well. Hadn’t they talked a few days ago about his relatives’ early demise? Hadn’t he tried his best to avoid stretching the conversation about dead family members further?

He raised a questioning eyebrow and looked back at the kid,

“It’s funny you mentioned it. I don’t think they get mail to the other side”

“What?” Levi frowned, “It takes some time, but I send her letters all the time. This is Germany we’re talking about. We invented the automobile.”

“More like you invented the lie,” Erwin couldn’t help an incredulous laugh from escaping his lips, “You were mourning only days ago”

“Mourning what?”

“Your mother and uncle’s deaths”

“Oh,” Levi paused for a second, squinting at the fire. Then he shrugged and waved a hand off at Erwin, “I can't believe you believed that. As if I’d just decide to spill my problems to a complete stranger.”

“I don’t do pity games, kid. The sun must have gotten to you to lie about your family bein’ dead”

“Not completely a lie. They're as good as dead. I'm just looking into the future.”

Erwin only shrugged Levi off and went to sit by the fire. The meat had finally gotten a bit of colour and was ready to be consumed. If only the nagging itch and burn could stop for a minute and let him be already. Occasionally, he scratched his back again, doing nothing more but to make the rash worse.

“Would you stop?” Levi suddenly snapped, shattering the calm around them in seconds, “You're making me itchy. It was an ant, for the love of god, not a wasp.”

“No need to concern over me, kid. I’m doin’ good” Erwin muttered and slipped his hand inside his shirt and undergarments, pulling the completely dry compress out, “Hand me that flask, will you?”

“I'm not concerning over you. You're bothering me,” Levi retorted. He got up with a huff and a string of mutterings Erwin neither understood, nor cared to, and went to retrieve the flask and Erwin’s handkerchief as told. When he came back, he crouched down behind Erwin so he was at level with his back, the flask still grasped in his hands.

“ach je,” Levi grumbled from behind him, he gripped Erwin’s wrist with slender fingers, tugging it away from the flaming bite, “You're going to make it worse. More than you already have, obviously.”

Erwin looked at Levi with wide, curious eyes, but chose to remain silent. He wasn’t one to refuse help when it was needed, and God only knew that he couldn’t cope with itches if his life depended on it.

“It’s annoying,” he finally muttered under his breath and took a bite of meat.

“Yeah, yeah,” Levi sighed and tapped at Erwin’s shoulder, “Am I supposed to do it through the shirt, or?”

“No. Give me a minute”

Erwin fumbled with the only remaining suspender and tugged the shirt out of his pants. Slowly and with clumsy moves, using only a hand to unbutton his shirt, while the other was holding the food, he managed to pull it over his shoulders. But given the fact that he couldn’t take off his shirt while still holding a huge chunk of meat in his right hand, Erwin had to put the food aside for a moment and got undressed again.

He could already foresee the biggest sunburn of the season, now that he got out of his undergarments too and stood half exposed in the sun.

“It blistered. You got any idea what could happen if you break that blister?” Levi dripped as little as he could of the cold water onto the handkerchief while still soaking it through. He pressed a hand to the base of Erwin’s neck, then dabbed at the inflamed area with soft, careful strokes, “It could get infected. We would've needed to chop your arm off.”

“It’s only an itch, kid. Don’t sweat too much over it.”

Even though the itch made Erwin’s fingers twitch at his sides, wanting nothing more but to rip and tear through flesh and get the comforting sensation of nails clawing at skin and soothe the pain. Mindlessly and completely out of impulse, he reached for his shoulder blade again, only to feel the wet fabric of the handkerchief. It almost left him with a sour taste in his mouth.

Suddenly, Erwin felt his hand being gripped, a warm palm pressed to the back of it and slender fingers sliding between his rough, calloused ones. Before he could even register what was happening, a thumb brushed right over his knuckles as the handkerchief was pressed harder onto the area. It spread a pleasant, wet, cooling feeling into the otherwise irritated skin.

“What did I just say about touching?” Levi said, his voice completely devoid of any bite or sarcasm.

Erwin was having a hard time processing what was going on. He felt a warm touch on his hand and soothing relief on his skin, both coming down fast at him. He only dared to peek over his shoulder, watching Levi from the corner of his eyes and mumbling an apology.

“Sorry. It itches”

“It’ll only itch more if you scratch at it like that,” Levi dabbed at the area again.

The hand he had intertwined with Erwin’s didn’t let up. Instead, it continued stroking his knuckles with every press the handkerchief made against his skin, as if attempting to shush the urge to scratch.

“We should've gotten alcohol from that old man,” Levi murmured, “ Works on other stings. Should work on this.”

“We should’ve,” Erwin agreed quietly, “I haven’t thought of that then “

“Didn't even want a drink?” Levi ran the thumb of his free hand over the swollen area, “That's weird. You've always struck me as someone who might like his alcohol.”

“Not exceptionally. If I have the time and chance, then I am up for that.” Erwin replied and began eating quietly.

“I bet you’re one of those people who don’t drink for months,” Levi droned, “And then empty an entire store's worth of beer in a day.”

Erwin nodded. He could feel the muscles in his left arm stretching, the twisted position of his limb putting pressure on the socket of his shoulder. Yet it felt almost like an extremely impolite gesture to try and pry his hand away from Levi’s, even though his fingers flexed and closed in a loose fist around the kid’s hand. Youngsters lost their interest easily, and Erwin was expecting to have his arm shoved away in a moment or two, the game already too plain and repetitive for the boy.

It was indeed a most uncanny situation Erwin encountered once again, and Levi wasn’t making it any easier with his habit of doing any kind of unexpected things and tricks.

“Alcohol is rare to find around here. ‘S too much of a pain to move from a border to the other for moonshine”

“I thought alcohol kept people warm,” Levi said, rubbing the compress onto Erwin’s sore, “Though I don’t think you need it.”

Before Erwin had the chance to reply, Levi pressed something else right in the middle of his back. It was soft, and cold, and almost velvety. It almost felt like...skin?

“You’re so warm already,” Levi murmured against Erwin’s skin.

It was a novelty for Erwin not to find his words or trust his voice. Not that he didn’t want to bother give the boy a reply, as was the case so often before. He stood silent and couldn’t stop his fingers from twitching because Levi had actually kissed his back, the skin right between his shoulder blades. And since no human being could control their involuntary reactions, the skin on Erwin’s arms and back burst into goosebumps.

What on Earth was the kid playing at? First the lie about his presumably dead relatives and now the excessive amount of interest in Erwin’s well being? And as if it wasn’t strange enough, the same person who was about to rip his throat with his bare teeth if Erwin dared walk closer to him, was now touching him in that certain way? That couldn’t be good at all.

The red flags were flicking before Erwin’s eyes like a firework festival on the Fourth of July.

What if the kid found out about the whole thing? What if he heard what you and Wyatt talked about at the shop?

He mentioned something about Erwin being rude and ignoring a third party, but he couldn’t have possibly heard their conversation, since Mister Wyatt was more than skilled at speaking with neither sound sound nor moving his lips. No, that was just paranoia coming back at him in tidal waves. The reality of the gang of bounty hunters trailing after them was more than enough for him.

But the warm sensation that settled deep in his gut was neither paranoia nor anxiety. It was something much more primal and simple to explain, an instinct that didn’t even need any explanation: unpolished lust. A strong lecherous feeling that pulled at him and made his head swim with thoughts that he wasn’t supposed to nurture for a man, a ridiculously young man, who was standing too close to him and only knew how to taunt and tease. That little devil got him cornered.

Erwin shook his head and also tried to shake off that nagging longing, and answered the boy, with a parched throat.

“It’s hot. I’m actually burnin’ “

“That’s nice,” Levi mumbled, the compress falling to his side as he inched forward.

Erwin wondered just how close the boy was planning on getting. His question was answered in the most uncomfortable way possible; with Levi shuffling so close that Erwin felt their body heat radiating between his back and the boy’s chest. Then, without further adieu, Levi slipped his arms around Erwin’s waist and latched onto him like a Venus flytrap, his cheekbone all but digging into Erwin’s shoulder blade.

“Really nice,” Levi yawned.

“Kid, what are you doin’?” Erwin finally asked

No answer. This was getting better by the minute.

“Hey, kid. I asked what are you doin’,” he pressed on and peeked over his shoulder. He couldn’t exactly see the kid but he could hear what seemed like light snoring coming from him.

So he actually fell asleep on Erwin’s back. Absolutely fantastic.

Groaning internally, careful not wake up the boy, Erwin turned around slowly. He caught Levi into his arms and hoisted him up. Now, that some cosmic occurrence made the kid fall asleep in the middle of the day and saved Erwin a few good hours of peace and quiet, he had nothing left to do other than carry him to a suitable sleeping place.

He found the best option under a tall coppery rock, that had a hole carved in it by a former stream flowing through the narrow passage millions of years ago. The hunchbacked structure of the cliff was throwing a relatively big patch of shadow on the burning sand, and Erwin laid Levi there.

Moments later, the boy was tucked up in his blanket and sleeping, sheltered from the relentless noon sun.

  
The rest of the day passed by in a blur of fragrant smoke and a buzzing white sun. The boy had fallen asleep without eating a thing, leaving Erwin to pack up the remnants of their meal in hopes it wouldn’t go sour by morning. Had he known they’d be coming by so much meat, he would have gotten a bottle of vinegar or at least some salt. Not that there was any use complaining, life had certainly taught him that much.

After that he’d spent his time sitting by the fire, shaking his leg absently as he tried to run the route to Hatillo through his mind again. This route was a few days longer than their previous one, but Erwin couldn’t really bring himself to regret making the change. Besides the fact it’d gotten the boy to cooperate for once, it might’ve also thrown their pursuers off track. Unless they’d sniffed their tracks from before and were simply waiting for the right time to take them down. But that couldn’t be, could it? Why waste so much time and effort by following them from one place to another when they could’ve just slit their throats by now? They could always be waiting for him to lead them to the jackpot so they wouldn’t have to drag the boy’s body around…

It was an endless storm of paranoia running through his head, and no amount of rational thinking over suffocating cigars could make things better. All Erwin could do to make himself feel the slightest bit better was put the fire off a lot earlier than usual, before the sky took on even the slightest shade of dark blue to make sure their campsite wasn’t spotted by any wanderers. Other than that, he had to force himself to head to his blanket, dragging it by the boy so he was trapped between Erwin and the crouching rock. As uncomfortable as he felt, being in such close vicinity to Levi after everything, but he knew he’d feel a lot more than just uncomfortable if he woke up to find the boy gone.

Erwin rolled onto his back, letting out a quiet sigh of relief when the ground pressed just right into his shoulder blade and diminished the itch. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, glancing to the boy only to find him deeper into sleep than anyone he’s ever seen in his life. Which was odd, since the boy had been sleeping all afternoon.

Well, as long as he was quiet enough to stop causing him searing headaches, Erwin couldn’t bring himself to care.

 

When he was young, Levi’s mother never let him take naps. She said it wasn’t good for him because it would keep him up all night, and that boys who didn’t sleep at night would never grow to be tall and strong and most importantly tall. All he’d gotten out of that were missed naps, which probably could explain his less than pleasant attitude, as an old friend liked to call it.

What his mother was right about, however, was that napping would end up ruining his sleeping. It sure had now, because when he woke up again, the only thing he could remember was the compress, and Schmidt’s glorious, toned back, and how perfect his cheek had felt against it, then complete blackness. He didn’t remember getting up to get his blanket, he didn’t remember it being so dark, and he certainly didn’t remember huddling up near some creepy looking rock either.

Levi rubbed at his eyes, sitting up in his spot, his legs tangled in the blankets that he’d been tucked under for who knew how long. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes long enough to see white stars, before lowering them and looking around with a tireless yawn. The fire had been put out, all that was left of it now were the burnt sticks and ash, and the animal Erwin had insisted on him eating was nowhere to be seen. Levi heard his stomach grumble at the thought of food, and suddenly the image of red, fat dripping meat didn’t seem all too disgusting.

Like you didn’t think Schmidt was all too disgusting.

Levi cringed to himself. He couldn’t believe the amount of disgusting thoughts that’d gone through his head in the few hours before he’d passed out. And...the thoughts he’d had before he’d been tired at all…

He didn’t know what it was exactly that’d turned the tables quicker than he could blink. Attempting to believe it was purely physical attraction was futile. Because the only time he would ever feel attraction towards an assole was before he knew they were an asshole, and not after spending a good deal of time cursing said asshole’s existence. Which could only mean one thing; one thing Levi didn’t even want to consider a possibility. Even though he knew people didn’t always get what they wanted -for some of them, some like Levi, this was the norm.

So, against his wishes, he found himself thinking of the man, now snoring next to him like his nose was broken or something, less as an asshole and more as a...borderline decent person?

More than that. Schmidt was more than just borderline decent. He’d went out of his way to get them food, then try to get him to actually eat it because beans weren’t enough to get them going for long. He’d put his hat over Levi’s head because he hadn’t been smart enough to bring his own and almost ended up blistering in the merciless Coilha. He’d completely brushed off Levi’s lie about his mother and wanting to sleep next to him because he was homesick, wrapping Levi up in blankets and tucking him beside him instead of letting him bake in the afternoon sun -which was probably something Levi would have done, had he been in Schmidt’s position. He’d brushed off Levi’s attempt to steal the gun, taken care of him when he’d poisoned himself with berries...the list was endless, really.

Sure Schmidt had also smeared Levi’s face with mud and dust, and he’d taken two hundred dollars from him for no reason and threatened him with a gun, and he’d ignored every attempt at civil conversation Levi made, but Levi liked to think the good he’d done made up for it. He couldn’t bring himself to hate the man with the burning passion he’d felt before. He couldn’t bring himself to sneer at the man as he slept next to him, an arm flung above his head like a drunk, blankets tangled around his legs so he was mostly uncovered in the cutting cold of the night.

The position Irvin had his arm would make it a little more than uncomfortable in the morning, and being uncovered in this kind of weather could turn the tables once again so Irvin was the one with incredible diarrhea/vomiting.

Levi stared passively at the man for a while, a number of thoughts bubbling in his head. Then he reluctantly reached for the blanket swirled around Irvin’s legs, deciding to at least return the favor of protecting the oaf from the elements. He struggled to tug it out of from under him, mainly because this man was more a beached whale than a human.

“For the love of--” Levi groaned, pulling harder at Irvin’s blankets. He set a hand to Irvin’s thigh to balance himself, all but snatching the blanket from between Irvin’s legs, “What the actual fuck?”

On second thought, maybe he could start hating him again.

Levi narrowed his eyes at the blanket, resisting the urge to tear it off and strangle Schmidt with it. He sat on his knees, leaning forward to continue his struggle with the the piece of shit. The hand planted on Irvin’s thigh gripped harder, and he almost felt the blanket give way under him when suddenly he heard one of the most horrifying sounds he’d ever heard in his entire life.

The same sound Irvin had made when Levi had accidentally pressed his knee to his crotch…

It hit every nerve in his body. That low, strangled hitch in Irvin’s breath. The kind of sound someone made just before a kiss, pressed flush against their lover’s body and clawing for--

Was his hand still on Irvin’s thigh? Where the fuck was his hand? Levi’s eyes snapped up to it, his face completely draining of color, his eyes almost falling out their sockets when he caught sight of just how far up Irvin’s thigh his hand had gone.

Levi stared ahead at the rock towering over them. He gnawed on his lower lip, running his hand up and down the horrifying swell under his palm.

What the actual fuck, Levi’s eye twitched. His hand could barely cover half of it, and he had to move it down to the man’s inner thigh to feel it disappear back into strong muscle. Now, Levi’s never really seen a whale cock in his entire life, but he was pretty sure Irvin came very close to it. What was worse was that he just couldn’t bring himself to take his hand off of it. It felt so perfectly molded into his palm, warm and all but pushing against him for attention and--

What the fuck?!

This was what happened when he tried being nice. This was what happened when he tried helping people. Kenny had warned him about this -Not about ending up fondling a guy’s cock, no, what the fuck?!. He’d warned him that trying to go against the natural order of things, which was for Ackermans to do nothing for anyone but themselves, would end in catastrophe.

Bad things happen, kid. People die. That's what happened when an Ackerman tried to be good.

Levi looked at Schmidt’s face. It was tense; his eyes screwed shut the way they would be when someone was having a nightmare. His hair fell haphazardly over the leather bag he used as a pillow, and shun dark gold. Stress lines marked his forehead, his jaw, and the corners of his eyes, probably the product of all that frowning he was used to during the day. And, in what little moonlight penetrating the sea of shadows cast by the towering rock, it was difficult to see Schmidt as anything but intimidating. Levi could imagine Schmidt’s eyes snapping open, pupils constricting threateningly like those of a snake before he’d lunge for Levi’s neck and snap it in half.

What kind of person found those features attractive?

The same person who’d seen those eyes burn blue in concentration as their owner sliced through and prepared their meal for the day. That blonde hair shine more golden than the jewellery mistress Bennett liked to flaunt all year long. Someone’d who’d seen that those crow’s feet, those lines around Irvin’s mouth lend more to the man than a threatening aura. Vigour, virility, age.

He’s always had an uncanny attraction to older men.

By a ridiculous paradox, Levi found it both inappropiate and perfectly timed to think back at the dusk of his boyhood’s innocence, behind the massive wood doors of the Stille Bruder. It was a moment like that when Levi discovered that his attraction to older men had spread wider than the conventional admiration for a father figure. By the time he reached seventeen, it was clear as day that he was lusting after broad shoulders, overburdened with hard work, and strong arms, that wore scars and ugly wounds like medals of honour. There wasn’t anything conventionally beautiful about these men. They didn’t talk much and weren’t gentle, neither with their words nor with themselves, but they were bits and pieces of a solid reality that made Levi feel secure and anchored.  
What gave him a strong sense of pride and fed his ego, was the fact that these men were so easily distracted by him that they forgot why they even came to the brothel in the first place. Eventually, as the night grew stronger and the alcohol started to weigh down on their tongues, their intentions of having a fille de joie at a fair price were pushed away, and they followed Levi with their hearts on their sleeves.

It wasn’t a matter of money, because Levi never demanded and the men seldom offered, careful not to insult him. After all, he didn’t go there to earn a living, and neither did he plan on doing so from then on, but he was presenting reality to them as a matter of giving and taking time and pleasure, not monetary satisfaction.

And during such encounters, he learned more about himself and what he had a taste for. It would have been crude of him to swoon over the so-called pretty boys, a category which he later found out he was a part of, mostly because a great deal of pretty faces and lithe bodies were still struggling to discover themselves and take the world as it was, -a bad joke, most of the time-, and Levi was never into guiding boys to men. He prefered them seasoned, beaten, and a bit broken inside. It couldn’t be helped, really. Not when kissing one of these bleak men felt like tasting the last glimmer of hope they were still clawing at. The visceral need to keep fighting after such hard defeats was what drew Levi in like a moth to a flame.

The same rules applied to Schmidt. Once a disgusting, vile and maddening drifter, was now presenting himself without any refuge, a scarred and lonely man who was pushing through the same unhinged world day by day, keeping his mind and words to himself. It felt like no matter how much dust fell on his clothes and face, those cerulean blue eyes could pierce through the thickest veil of dirt and misery.

The bastard was a man o’ war indeed, and it didn't do either of them any good that he managed to make Levi’s inside churn and knot, his blood flow heading down, instead of going up.

He wanted to hear that sound escaping Irvin’s lips again. He wanted to have him pinning him down again, press his wrists against the ground and straddle his waist. He wanted one of Irvin’s broad hands to press against him and set him aflame.

People didn’t always get what they wanted, and those like Levi knew that better than anyone. Yet sometimes, just sometimes, he liked to indulge himself.

Levi kept his eyes on Irvin’s face, gnawing at his lips as he watched him. The hand he had on the man moved reluctantly at first, adding the finest bit of pressure against the slight bulge in his undergarments.

He was so used to Schmidt’s expressionless face, so used to the man reacting to everything with a lack of reaction altogether, that the sight of the man’s closed eyes twitching, his lips flattening into a white line, caught him off guard.

So he was human after all.

Levi shifted in his place, trying to ease the pressure on himself as he leaned further onto Schmidt. He ran his hand over Irvin, his touch feather light and brushing over the man as he felt for every inch of him. He could feel himself twitching in the increasingly uncomfortable pants. Fuck was this man something. Well-endowed didn’t quite cover it. Either Schmidt was hiding a snake in his pants -because this was Schmidt, after all. Levi wouldn’t be surprised if he was-, or his cock could literally split Levi in half.

“Fuck,” Levi breathed. The blanket was long forgotten under Irvin’s legs as Levi’s other hand moved to grip the man’s hip to steady himself.

He should stop. This wasn’t just ridiculous. It could be dangerous. What if the man didn’t take lightly to these kinds of activities with other men -like about three quarters of the population-. They were halfway to George Town, if Schmidt was to be believed. Was he really going to throw all that away for one night of raging desires? Just when he was trying to formulate an answer to that, he heard that noise again, louder, more obvious, like a whine, begging him to do something.

How cruel would it be of him to stop now?

Levi bit down so hard on his lower lip that he tasted cooper. He pressed the heel of his palm against Irvin’s clothed cock, rolling his hand against it and running his thumb over the shaft. His eyes turned from the man’s face and focused lower instead, blurring with a primal need. Every little bit of pressure he applied brought out a louder sound, a twitch, making the man squirm under him. It made his mind flash white. He couldn’t think or see anything but how perfect Irvin felt under him.

Levi sucked in a quiet breath and moved the hand on Irvin’s hip to his own cock, carefully pawing at himself through his pants. A few minutes, that was all he needed. He’d finished himself, and others off, in a lot less when he put his mind to it, and his mind was fully focused on it right now.

And a film of erotic images was playing on the back of his eyelids when Irvin shifted under him.

Levi paid it no mind at first, thinking the man must be turning in his sleep, but in reality, Irvin was pulling himself in a sitting position, dragging Levi’s hand along with his imposing stature.

Next thing he could recall, was Schmidt’s husky, sleep-filled voice thundering from above.

“What are you doin’?”

 

Erwin found himself squinting his eyes in pitch darkness, trying to spot the boy’s face for any hint at what on earth he was doing with his hand on Erwin’s crotch. It felt almost too surreal and ridiculous to be happening, and Erwin had no idea whether to press it further or brush it off and go back to sleep.

As if going back to sleep was a valid option when he was sporting a more than decent erection in his pants. That was one of the two reasons he suddenly woke up when he was more than exhausted. The second was the occasional paranoia induced feeling that he might wake up swallowing a bullet.

Now that he thought about it, he could neither go back to sleep nor try to squeeze something out of Levi. Mostly because he was only staring at the boy with his mouth hanging open, all the blood sprinting from his brain to his cock.

It was the second time in the course of a single day that the boy put him in an impossible situation. What could a simple man do when his cock was more conscious than his mind? It was a truly stinky situation, with a capital S, as in ‘Smith, you fucked up’

Erwin tried to swallow some moisture down his throat, but just as anything he had done lately, that didn’t work either. Pushing himself up on his elbows was the only thing he felt capable of doing, other than stare at the kid like he was The Almighty and Erwin was currently having a divine revelation.

His aching erection wasn’t of any help in that moment. It only made his head spin and the hot whirlpool in his guts turn into a tropical thunder. The best and only option, shameful and alarming as it seemed, was for Erwin to get that off his mind and system, by finally getting off . He could excuse himself and go further down the trail and get through with it already. Or he could make the best of the situation and make the bloody kid pay off for causing this in the first place.

The second option seemed more viable, and all the more gratifying. After all, it wasn’t Erwin’s fault that a damned twenty year old ankle-biter looked like that and liked doing those kind of things. It’s true that you reap what you sow.

Erwin never broke the contact with those bottomless silver eyes, not even when he grabbed Levi’s arm and pulled him closer to him, directly into his lap. He didn’t even flinch when his eyes moved to the boy’s thin, lush lips. One could easily notice that they looked exactly like the lips of a young woman, bitten raw with expectation and anxiety, if one could gather his thoughts. It wasn’t Erwin’s case.

What made things both worse and more exciting was the fact that Levi was staring back at him with those doe eyes that could deceive without a second thought. It was really a shame that playing the innocent puppy wasn’t going to work this time. Not when Erwin was already fumbling with his buttons, almost tearing through the fabric, as he finally managed to open his pants and pull out his painful erection.

Seconds later, he did the same to Levi, holding both their cocks in his fist.

“You did this. Now pay off,” Erwin finally breathed and looked down at what he was doing, slowly sliding his hand up and down.

A gasp caught in Levi’s throat like a giant, angry knot when he felt Erwin's hand clawing at his pants before his mind could even make sense of the situation. His hands clambered up to Erwin's shoulders, gripping them in nimble fists hard enough to break the skin had Erwin’s shirt not protected him. From the expression on the boy's face, Erwin had a feeling he was trying -and failing- to think of some snarky remark. He didn't look like he could think much at all. Good. Whatever it was that Levi would want to say, Erwin was in absolutely no mood to hear it--

But, of course, why would Levi ever, ever give him any peace of mind but shutting the hell up?

“You horny bastard,” Levi breathed, a hot puff of air against the side of Erwin’s neck that splashed goosebumps across the sun battered skin. The audacity of this little brat, throwing that kind of crap at him when he was the one who'd woken Erwin up with a hand on his cock. What kind of a reaction was he expecting? More so after all those ridiculous attempts at riling him up. The ridiculous attempts that had actually succeeded in the end...

“Don’t give me that now” Erwin sneered, upper lip curling into a snarl. He felt like he was caught in a trance, like his hand was moving of its own accord. It sent sparks of pleasure down his spine, and he couldn’t hold back low grunts and shuddered breaths from escaping his lips.

The skin under his fingers was warm and velvety to the touch, Erwin putting just the right amount of pressure when his hand reached the base of their cocks, only to go up in a loose hold. It felt absolutely amazing, and Erwin tilted his head to the side to take in more of what was just happening.

At the same time, Erwin heard the boy letting out a strangled breath, his knees digging into his hips as he rocked back and forth, following the rhythm of the hand around him. Erwin could feel him grappling at his shirt, tugging at it desperately as if he wanted to tear it off altogether.

“Tell me, Herr,” Levi murmured, the words coming out warm and flustered against Erwin’s jaw where the boy was mouthing them, “How long have you been thinking about doing this that you just can't stop yourself now that you've finally gotten your chance?”

Levi moved his hand from Erwin’s shoulder, slipping it into his collar and brushing over the flushed skin of his chest, “What kind of filthy things have you been thinking off all this time?”

His question was met with a barely audible groan, coming from deep within Erwin’s throat. It wasn’t like he had any control on his body or mind, his hand sliding up and down, up and down, faster by each passing moment. Heat pooled in his stomach, making him forget about the chilly air that made his flesh burst into goosebumps, reminding him just how dangerously close he was to his release. He was being torn apart by the warm sensation in his lower body and the intense gaze of the boy above him, almost turning Erwin into a small and defenseless creature.

Without any notice, Erwin’s eyes shot up to meet Levi’s, watching him with his lips parted and the tense line on his forehead turning his expression into a frown.

“ ‘s your fault, kid. You made this happen.” he rasped, snarling at the boy.

“Did I?” The boy’s voice came out strained, no longer managing to mask it with a purr.

Erwin felt the boy’s hand slither up his neck, up to his jaw, cupping it for the briefest of moments before resting its fingers against his lips. It was only here and now that Erwin found out just how flawed those seemingly perfect, dollish fingers were up close. They felt cracked, crooked, and all in all imperfect, and nothing like the hands that’d pressed up against his back like silk feathers. He would have given himself more time to wonder whether those were the same hands at all, had it not been for the overwhelming heat blazing through every inch of him. All because of that flaming gaze from the boy’s eyes, boiling mercury pouring into his icy blues.

“Or did I just give you the ‘go ahead’?” Levi added, brushing his thumb over Erwin’s lower lip. He rocked his hips against him , sliding up against his hand, pressing his chest flushed against Erwin’s own, “You can tell me, Herr. Shame is for cowards and those who can’t make up their damn minds.”

Speaking of which, Erwin was having half the mind to open his mouth and bite off Levi’s fingers. He was boiling up on the inside, angry at himself because he had stopped using his mind and allowed the boy to wrap him around his little finger. You’re doin’ great, Smith. Keep up the good work.

Not like his hand wasn’t keeping up with Erwin’s frantic heartbeats. He just had to hang in there for a few more moments, enjoying the sin while it lasted. Which didn’t seem too long, by the looks of it.

“Shut up,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “Shut up and let me finish”

That only made the boy's eyes spark brighter, almost blindingly. Erwin knew right away he’d pull some kind of shit or the other, but didn’t quite have the time to think or prepare himself for it when he felt velvet like lips crash over his own in a hungry, needy collision. It drew a surprised huff out of him, almost sending them both stumbling back against the ground had his free hand not darted to the ground and kept them upright. But Levi was relentless. His lips thin and delicate as they were, fought to cover every inch of Erwin’s, a slick tongue slipping out to tease at him every little while.

It was more than enough to steal whatever breath was left in his lungs, yet it didn’t seem like the boy knew -or cared-. Because, surely enough, Erwin found another one of those damned hands covering the one he had around their cocks. It clutched it in as hard a grip as it could muster, jerking Erwin’s hand up and down at a quicker pace, while the boy squirmed in his lap, a litany of broken moans falling from his mouth and straight into his own. It was enough to make him dizzy and take a step closer to the edge.

Almost instantly, Erwin brought his free hand to the back of Levi’s head, fisting into the short, black hair and pulling him even closer. Moments later, his hips started moving by their free will, taking after Levi’s movements.

What the boy did to him was both blindingly pleasurable, and infuriating. Pleasurable for obvious reasons, and infuriating because he seemed to take his own pleasure out of stripping Erwin of the thing he’d prided himself on the most; control. Every buck of the boy’s hips against his own drove Erwin out of his mind, every press of those gorgeous lips against him dragged him to his climax by the neck. He was hanging on by a thread, gripping all his impulses to show the boy this would only end when he wanted to, not the other way around.

The hand in Levi’s hair was supposed to reinforce that, pulling the boy back when Erwin decided he’d gone far enough. He opened his mouth to ground something out, only to find words, air, and thought drowned out of him by a guttural groan. Levi’s hand had left Erwin’s in the struggle, and had instead taken to rubbing its thumb against the tip of his cock. Back and forth, smearing precum all over the tip. It only took a few strokes to have him parting his lips and struggling to pant. Levi mirrored Erwin’s movement, bringing his lips inches from Erwin’s, drinking him in.

It was almost terrifying just how easy this young, naive kid managed to light his veins like gunpowder with a flick of a delicate wrist.

Erwin let out a deep groan, burying his face in the boy’s neck and his hand tightening around both himself and the boy as his orgasm burned through him. His mind clouded over, not really comprehending anything around him, every muscle in him tensing like a gun about to fire.

Fuck, it’d been so long that he'd almost forgotten how good it felt to have his entire body shaking and shivering like this. His chest heaved with the aftermaths of his orgasm, sweat dripping down his temples and sticking his dishevelled hair to his forehead. He was still struggling to catch his breath, all of his senses frozen and nearly useless. Erwin could still hear the wind moaning, as it swirled between the narrow passage, circling every rock. The heap of stars and constellations were still burning above them, engulfing them in an eerie light that made their skin look translucent. It didn’t feel real. It felt like he was having an out-of-body experience, seeing himself and the boy from somewhere high above. This wasn’t his body, for he could not move a muscle or utter a single word, let alone move his blanket to the other side of the camp and try get some rest, if that was still an option.

Highly unlikely when his mind was screaming bloody murder at him for being so reckless and depraved as to get caught in the boy’s trap. Desperate men were unpredictable and stupid, and Erwin -of all the people he knew- had proven to be the most desperate of them all.

After what felt like ages, Erwin was able to breathe normally again, clinging onto every little piece of regained consciousness. Although being conscious and more or less aware of his surroundings wasn’t the best way to spend the night right now. The dreadful, filthy feeling that set in when he realized he'd came all over his undergarments and lower abdomen. He had to make sure he didn’t make much of a mess. Not more of a mess than they were already swimming in, anyway.

But it soon became clear that his range of option wasn’t that large at the moment The boy was still slumped all over him, inert and not too eager to move any time soon. Just what Erwin needed.

He closed his eyes for a second and open them again, deciding to tap on Levi’s shoulder and see if he could have a bit of peace of mind. At last. The boy looked up at him through a mess of black strands and long lashes. His hands were back to clutching Erwin’s shirt hard enough for him to feel his skin pinched between Levi’s fingers. Erwin was starting to realize just how uncomfortable the entire situation was by the minute.

“Hm?” Levi hummed, pressing his cheek over Erwin’s chest.

“You have to go to sleep, kid. We can’t start driftin’ early if you don’t sleep at night”

“But I slept all through the afternoon,” Levi said, “and I’m perfectly comfortable here.”

Well I am not. Why couldn’t the boy just cooperate for once and take a hint?

“But I haven’t slept all day and not much of this night either” Erwin replied

“Then sleep.”

“I can’t “

“Why not?”

That would be a bit harder to explain. He couldn’t just bluntly state that he felt something was quite off about what they just did. And it felt even more peculiar that they kept doing it, after the spell had disappeared. Nonetheless, it was for the best to do something and save what he could of the situation.

“It’s too hot” he answered.

“Mmhm,” Levi smirked up at Erwin. He trailed a hand up Erwin’s chest, and picked at the buttons leading up to the collar, “It’s steaming.”

Now, it would have been so much better if the kid realized their cocks were still hanging out and pressed between their bodies. That could easily make for a hell of an uncomfortable morning awakening of the body. He was only trying to do them both a favour, really.

“My….our...they’re still out, kid” Erwin mumbled, feeling like the entire amount of blood in his body stored up in his face and chest.

“Oh sure,” Levi sighed and pushed himself off of Erwin, rolling to his side, “Wouldn’t want them to be out. God forbid. We were born with them shoved in our pelvises so the midwives wouldn’t die of shock the minute they caught sight of our its being out.”

Erwin shrugged. The boy’s cynicism did not do much other than making him grateful for regaining a bit of control and time to think. And he need the time to think everything through, from what just happened between him and the boy, to the claw that he felt in his stomach every time his mind wandered to the gang of bounty hunters that was trailing after him.

Finally, his hands were fumbling with the buttons of his pants and he managed to buckle up and regain some sense of morality and decency. He’ll be damned if he was about to go to sleep with his cock hanging free and unattended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to every single person who commented, viewed, or gave this fic a Kudos! Don't hesitate to tell us what you think! We appreciate it a lot ;D.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a tad bit longer than the others because all the scenes in it fit better together. Hope no one minds teehee...
> 
> Also, this chapter hasn't been betaed so all mistakes are our own (we did read it over a million times to take care of some pesky typos, but some still remain because life isn't fair). Betaed chapter might be uploaded later on :D.

Back when Levi was five and Farlan still lived in Germany, the two boys used to have a ridiculous inside joke. Whenever one of them wanted to tell the other a secret, they would come up by the other and whisper ‘no, not here,’, then they’d take them by the arm and move two steps in any random direction ‘here’. It was ridiculous, but it used to make them laugh like they’d just heard an adult swearing for the first time.

Now, however, as he sat slumped against another searing hot rock, nothing but sand under him, Levi couldn’t really bring himself to laugh. Schmidt had woken him up a good half hour before the sun was set to rise, and insisted they started ‘drifting’ at once. Levi, barely conscious and almost delirious, had stumbled his way to his horse, clambering up without even packing his blankets like he was supposed to. If Schmidt had complained about Levi’s lack of liveliness that morning, Levi hadn’t heard it.

But what had gotten Levi’s teeth grinding was how they’d barely moved for two hours before Schmidt had stopped his horse and announced without the slightest bit of hesitation that they’d be staying here for a while. When Levi had asked for an explanation, barely holding himself from punching the man, Schmidt had just said this spot was ‘safer’.

Levi scoffed at the memory, glaring at Irvin. The man didn’t seem to notice. He was still focused on the ground where he’d been scribbling something with a stick since morning. Levi tried not to think of the fact Schmidt had dragged him to this spot, this spot that looked like any other spot in the desert and was barely a few miles from where they originally were, just to spend his day drawing pictures in the sand like a lunatic. If he did think about it, he was sure he would end up trying to strangle the man with his broken suspender.

He honestly had no idea what he was expected to do while Schmidt was playing Tic Tac Toe in the sand. Cooking what was left of yesterday’s catch wasn’t an option at the moment, for various reasons. One of them being that Levi was in no mood to fetch wood and start a fire, not after he’d had to run in sleep deprived circles to find a stick for Schmidt, just so he could draw lines in the dirt with it. Another good reason was that the meat, after being tossed in Irvin’s bag and exposed to the sun for so long, wasn’t to be trusted. Not when his top tier travel guide hadn’t been inspired enough to take some salt with him.

And speaking of prey, Levi just couldn’t wipe off the satisfied smirk that played on his lips at the moment. Not when big and mighty lone ranger Schmidt had given in so easily, like a desperate fresh-faced newspaper boy. Sure, it must have been frustrating for him to wander like a stray dog, in the middle of fucking nowhere, not even a soul to keep him company. It slowly got to you, especially when you were as tense as a virgin on her wedding night. He would lie if he didn’t admit that he was more than satisfied to see Irvin flinching and tensing under the smallest of his touches, let alone the glorious image that he made when Levi was caught with his hand on his cock.

It was like taunting a younger sibling. The same amount of appeasement when you saw your baby sister or brother pouting over the fact that they couldn’t strike back against the authority of the first born. The master of the house, the strong and mighty chief.

Only that this wasn’t a brotherly game of ‘who’s the boss of the back yard?’. This was Levi getting some sexual gratification from pushing the stern and uptight Schmidt to a bit of debauchery. Maybe it wasn’t fair to play that dirty, but the man was ridiculously good looking for a desert bum and pretty decent too, without mentioning the mysterious disappearance of the two hundred dollars and all the bossing around.

Try all he might, Levi was still getting pleasure out of being a little deviant. There was an extremely thin line between pain and pleasure, anyway. A thin line that could dissipate like smoke into air. The kind of bluish smoke that was coming out from one of Schmidt's cigarettes right then and there.

Levi cleared his throat in an attempt to catch Irvin’s attention, “What in the name of god almighty are you doing?”

Moments passed since Schmidt decided to make an effort and answer him.

“Makin’ a plan for our route” Schmidt finally mumbled. Not like it enlightened Levi in any way.

Typical. Levi’d assumed Schmidt would go back to his rude and savage habits and be a pain in his ass again in absolutely no time. But, surprisingly, that didn’t bug him at all. Not even a little. At any point before yesterday night, he might’ve found himself bubbling with barely contained frustration at Irvin’s attitude. Right now, on the other hand, Schmidt’s snippy, ‘i’m too busy for you’ answers did little more than stretch the smirk on Levi’s lips. Schmidt was the last person on this land that had any right to act as the mature, calm, perfectly rational one of their uncanny pair considering he hadn’t even tried to push Levi away last night. He’d just accepted it, with little more resistance than simply asking Levi what he was doing as if it hadn’t been the most obvious thing in the world.

Oh no. If anyone was pulling the strings here, it was Levi. And he bet everything he had right now and in Germany that Schmidt knew it more than anyway.

Levi climbed to his feet and casually made his way to Irvin. He stood behind him, leaning over his shoulder to squint at the incoherent squiggles Irvin was poking at with his stick.

“Hope we’re not lost,” Levi said, resting a hand on Erwin’s shoulder and giving it a subtle squeeze, “Are we?”

Levi could swear he heard his very soul squeal when Irvin tensed up under his hand. He almost felt bad for him. But not nearly enough to cut him some slack, not now when he knew where and how hard to hit.

“No. We just changed the path. It’s shorter and safer” He answered quietly and continued scribbling in the dirt.

“How interesting,” Levi leaned closer by Irvin’s ear, eyeing the cigarette he had between his chapped, taffy-pink lips, “Say, mind if you had me a cigarette and a match? It might help me wake up since you had the decency to drag me here in the early morning like a rooster.”

It was hilarious to watch how Irvin peeked at him from the corners of his eyes. He never turned his head to face Levi, nor did he look at him when he answered with his short and plain sentences. Poor bastard. If the sun hadn’t make him break a sweat already, Levi was definitely set on doing that. A cold, cold sweat in the middle of the fucking Arizona desert.

“You’re way too young to smoke,” Schmidt said, “Wait a few more years and then have a go”

“It’s funny you keep mentioning my age,” Levi grumbled, sneaking his hand towards Irvin’s cigarette, “How old do you think I am?”

Finally, he seemed to have gotten Schmidt’s attention. The man suddenly paused from drawing lines in the sand and looked at Levi, their faces so close to each other that Levi could feel Irvin’s breath on his cheek.

“I thought about that a few times. I recall you told me you are twenty”

“So, by your logic, twenty isn’t old enough to smoke,” Levi focused his eyes on the swimming cerulean of Irvin’s eyes. His fingers tingling as he brushed them against Irvin’s hand, “But it’s old enough to fuck?”

Bingo. It was absolutely wonderful how Irvin’s eyes turned to icy blue slits, the crow’s feet stretching along his temples. Levi didn’t think he would dare say anything other than a low grumble and get back to what he was doing. It was getting pretty tedious teasing the man without any fruitful result, besides a few flustered looks and a total indifference. But he wasn’t about to back off now and let go of the satisfaction. No way in hell.

Levi almost couldn’t believe when Irvin answered him.

“You’re not gettin’ any cigarettes from me, kid. Stop pushin’ your luck”

Levi made sure to keep his face as passive as he physically could. He had to fight every urge he had to break into a shit eating grin. If he had a mark for every time a man had sworn Levi wouldn’t get what he wanted out of them...he’d have one mark, because usually they were begging to give him whatever he wanted without him asking instead of continue the tough guy act like Schmidt here. No trouble. Levi’d always liked a good challenge.

He cocked a brow at Schmidt, “Yeah?”

“That’s right.” Schmidt spared him one final look and got back at whatever he was doing.

“That’s a real shame,” Levi pouted.

He let go of Irvin’s shoulder and rounded the log he was sitting on, stopping when he was crouched in front of Irvin.

Levi looked up at him with innocent eyes, “Well, in that case, since you’re too cheap to spare me one, measly cigarette,” he stood up slowly, never moving his eyes from Irvin’s narrowed, menacing ones.

It didn’t take a genius to know Irvin was watching him closer than one eyes their belongings when standing by a master criminal. There was no telling what reaction any of Levi’s brash movements could bring on. For all he knew, Irvin might not hesitate to elbow him in the face and break his nose. Cunning wasn’t cunning if it didn’t come with ‘careful’. Levi would need to pay extra attention to the later. He’d never been too good at it.

“I guess we’ll just have to…” Levi watched Irvin take a long, almost daring drag of his cigarette. He leaned slowly enough not to startle Irvin so his face was inches from the man’s, “Share.”

Levi didn’t give Irvin a chance to sneer as he all but threw himself at him. One of his hands darted to grip Irvin’s wrist, pinning the cigarette in the air. Which was fine, since the cigarette wasn’t Levi’s goal at all.

Irvin’s lips were. And he was happy to say he never missed his goal.

One of the few advantages of his small structure was that he could move really fast and was more or less unpredictable. That was one of the reasons why Schmidt was lying flat on his back, his eyes blown wide. Levi hoped he didn’t hit his head while landing, but you could never be 100% accurate when launching an attack. The good thing was that his attack turned out to be a success, and Irvin opened his mouth mid fall, probably too shocked to grasp what was really going on and why on Earth was he sprawled on the ground.

Good. That was exactly what Levi wanted, and it couldn’t have gone any smoother than this.

Levi’s hands gripped Irvin’s shirt collar, fastening himself on top of him like a bear trap. He cast one last glance up at the blistering blue eyes before closing his own, all but grinding against the body below him. Memories of the night before were sluggish and whitewashed in his mind, given the fact it had been bubbling with nothing but lust. He couldn’t recall whether or not he’d had a chance to taste Irvin like this, with their mouths pressed suffocatingly against each other in a way that was sure to make their lips swell and bruise.

Irvin tasted overwhelmingly of the smoke he’d dragged from the cigarette, but there was also something bittersweet that Levi just couldn't put his finger on. Like Absinthe, although he didn’t remember either of them sipping all through their journey. It was intoxicating, to say the least. Enough to push Levi to running his tongue along Irvin’s lower lip, then proud deeper along his mouth. After all, if the man had wanted to kill him for being so audacious, he probably wouldn’t have jerked him off just hours before. Or kiss him back with real intent.

Schmidt was surely a piece of work. Levi couldn’t exactly understand how the man’s mind worked. One minute he followed all of his moves and responded to those aggressive touches with the same hunger and lust firing up in his brain, the other he lay limp and inert on the ground, as if he was struggling to decide between what was right and wrong. But, much to Levi’s surprise and unrepressed satisfaction, the man chose to be responsive and take what Levi was giving him, kissing him back hard with teeth and tongue, more than starting out slowly and gradually increasing in intensity and power.

Schmidt was indeed an animal in all aspects of his strange life. Of course, the last thing Levi wanted was for this particular beast to think this was going to work by his own, wild rules. No, this was Levi’s game. He was the only one to decide what strings to pull, when to pull them, and how hard. And, right now, he decided they’d had enough. Where would the fun be in giving everything in one go, anyway?

So Levi pulled away as quickly as Schmidt had gone from a docile puppy to a rabid dog biting at his lip like he wanted to draw blood. He untangled himself from Schmidt completely, and got to his feet, dusting himself off as if nothing had ever happened.

Without looking down at the man, Levi hummed, “I can see why you’re not too keen on sharing, Schmidt. The stuff tastes amazing.”

Schmidt didn’t answer him. Not like Levi had any high hopes in getting a verbal response from the man. But the pleasure of seeing him scurry back to his feet and wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt was more than enough for the moment.  
When he finally decided to turn his attention back on Irvin, Levi was met with an icy cold glance, the same dead fish look turning back into the man’s eyes. It was like the light in Schmidt’s head went off again, leaving him limp and lacking any sign of emotion. Sometimes Levi wondered if his first assumption about Schmidt being dead wasn’t entirely false. He couldn’t help but be intrigued by his movement, fluid and precise when it came to killing or avoiding a potential life threatening situation, but heavy and almost clumsy when he had to interact with another human being.

If they weren’t discussing sex. What he couldn’t give in a conversation or a social conjuncture, he was making it up to Levi by acting like a savage, pulling at his clothes, growling and biting. Animals had more acute instincts, after all.

“Do you want to play a game, Irvin?” Levi asked.

In the tar thick darkness of that night, he could barely make out Schmidt’s outline even though the man sat not two inches from him on the log. Normally, they kept a fire brewing until they decided to hit the hay, but for some strange reason, Schmidt had been completely against the idea of keeping their afternoon fire bustling as soon as the sky started turning its evening purple. Levi hadn’t really felt the need to argue, chocking it up to one of the man’s survival plans -and also having practically gotten used to the lack of explanation for everything Irvin did. He didn’t really mind the darkness either. The dark meant no more sun baking their bodies like roast. The dark meant no more sweating because their bodies refused to be baked without putting up a fight. It was cool, it was soothing, and it didn’t put strain on his eyes by making them squint all the time, so Levi didn’t really mind at all.

What he did mind, though, was the silence that stretched between them. He found it impossible to believe a human being could be this quiet, barely even acknowledging the existence of others without being prodded by random questions and childish games. Schmidt was a fascinating specimen, defying all improbabilities. He’d barely regarded Levi with a word or two throughout the day, busying himself instead with seemingly random activities. Levi had watched him with morbid fascination; carving a random stick with that stupid hunting knife, staring into the distance and whistling a crooked tune, possibly finger-fucking his gun with Vaseline. Though Levi wasn’t too sure about the last one, even though he’d been very intersted in it, paying special attention to the movement of Irvin’s fingers.

“Hey, Irvin,” Levi pressed, stretching out an arm to poke Schmidt’s shoulder, “Want to play a game, Irvin?”

“No.” Irvin answered, more or less annoyed.

Not like he wasn’t annoyed all the time. Even in his sleep, Levi could assume, by the way he was frowning.

“It’ll be fun,” Levi cocked a brow, “That, or I could help you pull the 5 inch thick stick out your arsch.”

Schmidt threw him an unamused look, lifting the sharp stick at eye-level. It was hard for Levi to distinguish something more than blurred shapes and hurried movements in the dark, but the sky was always clear and brimming with millions of stars and small meteors, powerful enough to make Schmidt’s eyes glint in the night. That, and the fact some people had a way of looking at you that made you feel slightly uncomfortable. Even though you couldn’t see their eyes, you could feel they were staring at you. Just like that old story about people who had such great power of concentration, that they could make others turn their heads and face them, even though their subjects were previously paying them no mind.

Schmidt was that kind of person, with creepy doll-like eyes that stared into your soul and burned holes inside your skull.

Levi was almost sure his eyes would roll back in their sockets and fall inside his skull if he suggested Schmidt play a staring contest. Creepy old geezer.

“What do you want, kid?”

Irvin Schmidt, you are a rude, uncivilized, creepy and uncomfortable bum.

“It’s easy enough for someone like you to understand, I promise,” Levi cleared his throat and sat up straighter, “I’ll be the commander, and I’ll ask you to answer a question. If I don’t like your answer, then you have to do something for me. Or you get mud on your face. But since I’m not going anywhere near mud, we’ll skip that and just say that you’re a sore loser who can’t follow the rules.”

There was a long moment of silence after Levi explained the game to Schmidt. Judging by the man’s more than unusual behaviour and savage personality, Levi was expecting to be ignored again.

Until he heard Schmid scoff and getting back to chopping up wood. It was reassuring indeed to be proven right.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Levi said. He had to if he wanted them to get anywhere at this rate, “Now...first question: How many living people do you know? Wyatt doesn’t count, since he’s half mummy.”

Silence. And then an “I am not playin’ any games, kid”

No, you’re just a dick who is playing hard to get. Levi hoped he didn’t let that one out.

“Shhh,” Levi pressed his finger against Irvin’s shoulder, not really brave enough to shove the stick into his eye like he wanted to. So very much.

“Can you hear that?” Levi whispered, “It’s the sound of the stick in your ass, worming its way through to your throat. If only I had a lantern and a mirror, I could show it to you. But alas…”

“Cut me some slack. It’s too late for games”

“Too late in the day, or in your life?” Levi said, “Are you dying, Herr?”

“Too late in general.” Schmidt grumbled

“If it makes you feel any better…” Levi murmured in fake earnesty, “I think, for a corpse, you’re beautiful. Deep down, at least. Deep, deep down.”

He didn’t wait for Schmidt to answer before scooting closer to him until their thighs bumped, then he tilted his head to get a good look at the man’s eyes. Still glinting, their color barely seen in all the blackness around them. But they were still there, refusing to be blown out. The way stars were always present in the sky, only ever overshadowed by the sun.

Schmidt really, really didn’t deserve those eyes. They were wasted on him like a good suit was wasted on a beggar.

“What if you asked me a question instead, Kommandant?”

This time, Levi was positively sure he got Schmidt good. Big time, if he dared to be cocky about his success. His eyes never left Irvin’s face as the man stared back at him, eyebrows furrowing in an expression of confusion and irritation Levi grew to foresee and understand. The lines that were blooming on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes were another obvious sign that Schmidt had been backed in the corner again.

This never ceased to amuse Levi.

“Why are you pullin’ that stuff with me?” Schmidt finally asked, in a serious and flat voice.

Levi blinked, his mind freezing for a minute. Whatever he’d been expecting Schmidt to say, it hadn’t been that. He mainly expected a sneer, a snippy retort, maybe even Schmidt getting to his feet and leaving altogether. But the dry question, spoken in a drier tone and a stern face, wasn’t at all something he’d anticipated, or knew how to react to. Damn this man. Damn him and his endless ability to suck the life out of everything.

“What stuff?” Levi droned, sitting up straight.

“You know what I am talkin’ about,” Irvin pressed the matter further, “the stuff that’s been goin’ on since yesterday.”

“What stuff?” Levi crossed his arms.

“I’m not in the mood of playin’ make believe, kid. You know damn well what I am talkin’ about.”

“ach du lieber Himmel,” Levi groaned, “You’re like a nun. Look at you! You can’t even say it. You call it stuff, like an eight year old, and I’m supposed to be the ‘kid’?”

“Just answer the question properly or go to sleep, ‘cause I am not satisfied with your answer.” Irvin said bluntly.

Levi paused, not even sparing Schmidt a second glance as his mind worked on formulating an answer. He felt like he was being lectured by his father, and not some random stranger who’d basically robbed him of two hundred dollars, led him on the worst misadventure in his entire life, and then had the audacity to play with both his emotions and...other things. To top it all off, now he’d switched off completely as if he hadn’t been begging for the ‘stuff’ they did that morning to last longer with the way he kept grappling, and biting at Levi. This game was getting pretty boring, pretty quickly.

“Let me answer that with another question,” Levi looked back to Schmidt, “Did you like it?”

He absolutely hated when one of his idea was being mutilated like that. The only thing Schmidt was good at, besides looking almost decent, was ruining everyone’s fun.

Levi tiled his head to the side and took in more of the man’s face, watching as he pursed his lips into a thin, white line and his eyes narrowed to blue slits.

“You can’t even play your own game, kid.” he said and dropped the stick. Levi couldn’t see him clearly, but he heard shuffling, as Schmidt got up and walked to his horse.

“You can’t even answer a simple ass question!” Levi hissed after him, “What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why do you have to make such a big issue out of everything? And for the love of god, drop the hero act already. You had no qualms about taking my money and forcing me to follow you around like a stray dog, and now you’re suddenly conscientious because, what? I kissed you? I kissed you?”

Irvin paid him little mind as he came back with the blankets and tossed one at Levi. He didn’t seem fazed by Levi’s harsh words either. If anything, Schmidt tucked himself in the blanket and settled under a dead Acacia trunk, somewhere a few feet from him.

“ ‘m not makin’ any big issue. I asked you somethin’ and you avoided the question” he called from his spot.

“Well you never answer any of my questions,” Levi huffed, settling his blanket right next to the log. He scuttled under it with his back to Schmidt, his face crumpling so hard it almost hurt. Almost. Not as much as the urge he had to kick the man right in the groin, “So I guess we’re even.”

“Fine by me. It’s good night then” Schmidt concluded and pulled the blanket over his head.

Levi stared ahead though there wasn’t really anything to stare at but miles and miles of pure black nothing. He doubted he would have been able to see much even if there’d been enough light. Not with how his mind was bubbling at what had just happened.

There was something about Schmidt that he couldn’t help but admire, as angry as it made him. He had this uncanny ability to turn the table, to pull the rug right from under your feet in under five seconds. One minute, Levi thought he was the one pulling all the strings, that he’d be able to do as he pleased without Schmidt being able to utter so much as a word. The next, Schmidt had him curled up in his blanket screaming bloody murder in his head because he was so frustrated and nowhere near the control he thought he possessed not one minute before.

What if he never was in control to begin with? What if Schmidt was the one playing the game all along, and enjoyed watching Levi think he was the victor in all the ‘stuff’ that’d been happening recently.

That bastard, Levi narrowed his eyes, a tinge of bitterness settling in his chest. That perverted bastard.

Levi peeked over his shoulder, and the log pressed against it. He couldn’t see Schmidt’s face, the whale of a man having decided to cover it for no reason other than to make Levi’s eye twitch. He snarled to himself, turning over to the side facing Schmidt and the log, and pulled the blanket up to his chin.

Like hell he would let some oaf make a mockery out of him. Like hell.

“I think I don’t want to answer because it’s…” Levi piped, coating his voice in as many layers of feigned innocence as he could muster, “So...shameful.”

  
Will he be lucky enough as to get a reply from Schmidt? Definitely. There was no sound in the air, no sign that could let Levi know Schmidt was asleep. It was as if the man wasn’t even breathing. Maybe he had an aneurysm and died.

How lucky can a man get in one night?

“I don’t think shame is your biggest problem, kid”

Schmidt voice came to him like a soft breeze in the middle of July. He was just too easy.

“I know,” Levi said, “But it isn’t that simple. It’s that...I know I have a problem...curbing certain feelings. And it's shameful that I don’t feel shame when I can’t. Do you understand?”

“I don’t. That’s why I asked you in the first place”

“I’ll try to make it simpler,” Levi sighed, “I know what I did with you was horribly wrong, Herr. I think about it sometimes at night…”

Schmidt fell silent again. Levi heard the rustling sound his body made on the grit and imagined Schmidt turning to his other side, maybe with his back at Levi. He couldn’t see anything in the gloom at all.

“I’m glad we sorted that out, kid.” his voice come out as muffled. So you’re sleeping on your stomach, like a beached whale. Unbelievable.

“No, we didn't,” Levi pressed, “I just...it's so awful. Whenever I try to bring myself to think it's wrong, I end up remembering what we did.”

Levi drew in a raspy breath, “And I get those feelings all over again.”

Levi heard Schmidt shifting again. As much as this man tried to avoid the subject and pushed the reality of what they’ve done far away from him, Levi was always more than happy to constantly remind him about the depraved and animalistic way he was acting when his mind was clouded with lust.

Schmidt was no hero, he was just as human and flawed as any other man Levi stumbled upon in his life. Only that Schmidt seemed more deranged at times.

“You’ll be better tomorrow. Sleep will fix you up” he mumbled in a sleepy voice.

“Mmhm,” Levi hummed, “Same way sleep fixed you up that night, didn't it? It was sleep after all, wasn't it? I mean, it couldn't have been my cock against yours. That would just be wrong and so uncomfortable.”

You should have played along, Herr. It was times like these that Levi could feel his heart singing and almost bursting out his ribcage. He turned the tables in his favour again, like he had never been the one in difficulty to begin with.

“You’re bein’ uncomfortable now. And very annoying. Save your breath for tomorrow, kid”

Someone was losing his patience. What a pity that was.

“I really wish you would've played that game with me,” Levi breathed, “I would've told you to do so many things. Wrap an arm around my waist, slip a hand between my legs like I know you've been aching to do for days now.”

“Better yet,” Levi continued, just loud enough for Irvin to hear, “I would've loved it if you'd been in charge, Kommandant.”

The silence that followed made Levi’s ears ring. He didn’t know whether to be satisfied with Schmidt’s lack of response, because he outsmarted him again, or be frustrated, since he managed to ruin his fun again. He would have given up and try his luck again tomorrow, if it weren’t for the barely audible sigh that escaped from Irvin’s lips.

He was very much conscious and extremely uncomfortable. If Levi could see in the dark. He would have known that Erwin was staring into the same black distance, his heart hammering between his chest and the hard ground he was lying on.

But Levi was satisfied enough with that sound. His lips stretched in a deadly grin.

“But anyway,” Levi faked a long yawn and turn to his other side again, “Wouldn't want to keep you up all night with my uncomfortable, childish fantasies.”

Levi buried himself in the blanket, the smile never leaving his lips as he closed his eyes, “Good night, Herr.”

Erwin woke up with his teeth chattering. Sometimes, when the day was exceptionally hot and dry, the temperature could drop even to -4 C at night. During those cold nights, Erwin felt his body shaking violently, the muscles trying to generate enough heat as to warm him up and keep him alive.

Only that this particular time, he wasn’t cold, nor could he feel his muscles tensing and shivering uncontrollably. His head ached badly, as if a bundle of copper wires were being pulled tighter and tighter inside each temple, making it harder for him to figure out what exactly was happening to him and why couldn’t he stop his mind from repeating the same words again and again, like an inarticulate prayer.

_Get up and do somethin’, get up and do somethin’, do somethin’, Smith._

Erwin’s respiration was shallow and rapid, his chest heaving with every breath he struggled to suck in and let out. He was utterly disorientated, incapable of understanding whether it was paranoia causing the electric spasm that brought him back to full consciousness, or if it’d been bad dream that’d stopped abruptly, just before it’d reached its climax and vanished in the back of Erwin’s mind.

A dead low tide filled his lungs as he pushed himself upright, trying to keep his balance on both feet. What he had experienced was a bad dream indeed, one of those shockers that made your head spin and your throat gurgle with the bitter taste of bile. A dream so awful that Erwin couldn’t possibly find a proper name for it, he didn’t exactly know how to call what his unconscious mind had created…

_It’s so very shameful, Herr._

“Shut up”.

Erwin flinched. He didn’t realize how his voice echoed in his ears, like a roar of thunder, when his own voice was the only sound that filled the still of the night. He was talking to himself.

No, he was talking to the source of his current misery, the man-boy who managed to crawl under his skin and in his late night thoughts like a parasite. He hated the kid, now he was positively sure of it.

He wanted the kid.

“Shut up”, he barely managed to utter, with a throat so dry that it could spit cotton.

It was absolutely ridiculous and lacking any bit of sense. He wasn’t attracted to a kid. He couldn’t possibly be frustrated over what the dirty mouth of a rug rat could produce. He wasn’t questioning his morals and his ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

Just like he wasn’t about to question the aching erection he was sporting at the moment. Because it was there, and it was even more real than Erwin’s thoughts were altogether.

Erwin felt like breaking into fits of hysterical laughter. It was unbelievable what was happening to him right now, what had been happening since yesterday, when his mind crashed and failed to send any more signals to his hands, other than keep’em moving up and down. He lacked human contact and the reality of his lonely life was striking faster and harder than ever.

Had it been days, weeks, months since he had lain with a woman? He couldn’t tell. Smith couldn’t tell anything other than that he was slowly reaching his limit. It was like tightening the noose around a convict’s neck and allowing him to push the chair back. That’s exactly how it felt to be around the boy and his cursed, dirty mouth.

A mouth that wasn’t entirely in the wrong. Smith had thought about putting his hand between those slender legs, he wondered what the colour of Levi’s thighs were, whether they were a milky white or had been touched by the sun and coloured with pink. Fleeting thoughts, leaving as fast as they dared to intrude his mind.

But the shameful truth was that they had been there. They were just as palpable and solid as the jagged cliffs of Coilha. They pulled the breath out of Erwin’s lungs with a pair of steel pliers and left him questioning the very essence of his life-long beliefs. He didn’t dare getting close to the ones he was sending to the gallows, he always saw them as nothing more than a job, an uncomfortable part of his survival. He was completely objective to their lives, hopes and sufferings. Erwin had his own personal demons to battle against every day. He didn’t need to carry around those of others like dead weight.

He didn’t ask for their names, he didn’t want to recognize them as living, breathing organisms. They were just a job, means of survival.

Only that the kid’s name had found its way on Erwin’s lips more than once. He almost had been foolish enough to say it out loud and make the mistake of giving the boy’s presence a purpose, a doorway to Erwin’s conscience.

But in the middle of the night, when the sky felt like a ten ton veil hanging above their heads and ready to fall at any moment and break their necks, Erwin’s conscience was brimming with guilt. He had always known he wasn’t a good man, but he liked to believe that he wasn’t the worst either. He was just another soul who tried to squeeze as much as he could out of life. The trick, Erwin often told himself, was not minding the possibility of getting blood on your hands from time to time. It was kill or be killed in the middle of his world, at the basis of his very existence. Guilt had no room to show its ugly head.

Yet It was guilt that Erwin felt on the tip of his tongue when he covered himself with the pillow and lied flat on his back. It was a taste of muddy water that filled his mouth when he slipped his hand inside of his pants and started fisting his erection. The bundle of copper wires that he felt in his temples were the pangs of his conscience, screaming at him, while his breath hitched and warm liquid ran between his fingers.

Erwin mouthed Levi’s name as his cock gave a final twitch and dropped flaccid on his stomach. His mind screamed a litany of curses that were meant to keep him awake and bustling with remorse and shame. Only that Erwin was too tired to care for anything other than the dreamless, black void that was lying somewhere deep in his head.

The last coherent thought that flashed through Erwin’s mind before he fell asleep was that he gave his demons a name after all.

Lack of professionalism.

  
Levi wouldn’t exactly call himself a sore loser. Yes, he did have a slightly difficult time swallowing the idea of defeat. Yes, he often found himself unable to sleep when he found that his plans weren’t going the way he’d pictured them in his head. And, yes, sometimes he came close to kicking the life out of whoever it was who dared turned the tables on him -or at least, he’d pictured it in Schmidt’s case-, but how was it possible to call yourself a sore loser when you’ve never really lost before in the first place?

There was always a way to get back in the front lines.That was something his uncle had taught him. He’d also taught him that sometimes it just took a little dirty playing, a little cheating maybe, to achieve that. That was why certain people won more often than others. Because those certain people weren’t afraid of playing dirty, and everyone, but everyone, knew that the right type and amount of dirt always got you what you wanted. Living in a tavern in the rather shady towns in Bavaria, Levi could safely say that he’d polished his dirty playing skills well over the past fifteen years. And a perfect example of just how effective Levi’s little games were was Schmidt’s little breakdown last night.

_Shut up. Shut up._

Levi smiled to himself, crouching by their blankets, which he’d folded into two neat packs and was now tying up with one of their spare ropes. Schmidt’s voice still rang in his head, strained and dragging out of his throat like nails against a chalkboard. He felt sadistic just for admitting it to himself, but that had been music to his ears as he’d pressed his back to the log, sinking his teeth into his wrist hard enough to leave a vivid bite mark he was now forced to cover with his sleeve, to stop himself from laughing hard enough to wake every living creature within a fifty mile radius.

It was a dangerous game, he knew that well. Dangerous and pretty fucking pointless. Levi had no reason to push Schmidt’s buttons other than the fact he found it amusing, and the man infuriating. And Schmidt could turn on him any second, decide this wasn’t worth all the trouble, and end up smothering him in his sleep. To any less impulsive, less easily angered person, the whole thing would seem ridiculous. The more rational part of Levi’s own mind told him to tone it down already. After all, he’d gotten what he’d wanted. Schmidt knew better now. Heck, Levi would sooner chew off his arm than suspect the man would have the audacity to try and mess with him now.

But the little voice inside his head told him that the fun shouldn’t end so abruptly. Sure, Schmidt could kill him in an instant if that’s what he wanted. Snap his neck like it was nothing more than a chicken bone. But then again, why didn’t he do it up until now?

Levi was well aware of the fact that Schmidt’s mind was a loud jumble of thoughts, that made him think of the darkness in the heart of those exotic places inhabited by Pygmies, everything alive and hungry and extremely dangerous. Levi knew there was the corrosive little coil of shame that urged Schmidt to remain silent and act like nothing had ever happened. And that was exactly the thing that made Levi keep going on and on, inching closer and closer to the point of no return. It was undeniably thrilling to reassure Schmidt that he wasn’t all that powerful, he was no god of the desert or a man made of steel. On the contrary, he was at Levi’s mercy at the moment, and God only knew how much was left of their journey. Hopefully, long enough to see Schmidt on his knees and scrubbing the grit with his face.

The same little voice in his head was also the one who assured him that Schmidt was more stupid than he was insane, a man who couldn’t get a grip on his own thoughts. It was so easy, Levi was almost too embarrassed to push it further. Almost. Never fully satisfied with the outcome.

It was only a matter of time, after all. Just a little longer until the bastard will give up and run with his stupid old hound tail between his legs and just fuck of--

“Come here, boy”

Levi’s head snapped up in Schmidt’s direction, frowning at the sudden interruption of his flowing thoughts. He was still seated on the log Levi had been sleeping against for all of the previous night, staring at his knife like he was going to solve the world’s greatest puzzle.

“What?” Levi groaned, “I’m not done packing up yet.”

“It won’t take long.” Schmidt replied with a monotone voice, not taking his eyes off the knife.

Levi rolled his eyes and got to his feet, dragging himself to Schmidt. Whatever the man wanted couldn’t be too important, that much he knew for sure, which made it all the more frustrating to have to drop what he was doing to listen to whatever unimportant thing Schmidt wanted to say. It was too early for an argument, Levi told himself as he stopped in front of Schmidt and cocked a brow. Too early for an argument.

And way too early to feel like the life is slowly draining out of your body and your knees suddenly deciding to betray you. Levi was certain that he was about to fall on his knees if it wasn’t for Schmidt’s hand that grabbed his face and dug his fingers into the hollow of his cheeks. If there was anything true about the old cliche about life flashing before your eyes, Levi wasn’t in any position to deny or confirm that, not when the only thing that flashed before his eyes was the sharp blade of Schmidt’s hunting knife.

To Hell with the dumb voices in his head that advised him to follow the course of his foolishness.

“What…” Levi rasped, his words coming out smothered by the fingers pressed into his cheeks. He reached to hold Schmidt’s wrist with a shaky hand, “are you doing?”

“Hold still. It won’t take too long.”

Levi could have sworn Schmidt had hummed those words. Then, just as quickly and unexpected as he had grabbed his face, Schmidt let go of Levi, instead grabbing a handful of his bangs.

Oh God, he is going to smash my face with his knee. Oh God, this is bad, this is terrible.

Levi closed his eyes shut, preparing himself for a blow that was more than likely going to leave him unconscious and with a mouth full of broken teeth. But that kick never came. Instead, Schmidt moved the knife with a swift motion and cut the few strands of raven hair that were hanging over Levi’s eyes.

Try as he might, he was only able to open his eyes after what felt like ages.

“There you go. Ain’t that much better now?” Schmidt’s voice could have been almost soft, if not for the usual growl that made it raspy.

Levi was staring at him with his mouth open, completely thrown off his feet by the man’s gesture. But what made his throat go as dry as the sand under his boots was the expression on Schmidt’s face.

The bastard was smiling at him.

“What the hell,” Levi cleared his throat. He needed a moment to steady both his voice and his knees, staggering a good few steps away from Schmidt and staring at him with dazed eyes, “What did you do that for?”

“You were startin’ to look like a feral child. Thought it might help you a bit with your high expectations on cleanliness”

Levi’s eyes never left Schmidt’s face. The man’s words did nothing to wipe away his bewildered expression, amplifying it instead so his eyes felt like they were about to jump out of his sockets, and his mouth hung open. Did Schmidt say what Levi thought he said? Did Schmidt really just chop off a few strands of his hair because he wanted him to look...better?

Was it a warning? Schmidt showing off how sharp his knife was, and trying to tell him that the next thing it sliced through would be his throat? Or was it another random act; something like giving Levi his hat or wrapping him in blankets when he fell asleep in the middle of the day? Levi couldn’t be too sure. Not when Schmidt’s face gave away nothing but pure confidence, as if what he’d done was the most normal thing in the world. Levi couldn’t make out anything else in the lines of that ragged, rough, freckle spattered face, nothing in the straight line of his pale, chapped lips, nothing in the hard, almost painful draw of his eyebrows.

Irvin Schmidt was unreadable and unpredictable, and Levi couldn’t tell whether that annoyed, terrified, or intrigued him -probably a bitter cocktail of the three.

“Um, thank you?” Levi ran a hand through the cut strands. If only there were mirrors in the deserts. Maybe then he’d be able to decide how he felt about this, “I’m going to...go finish packing up.”

So finish packing up he did, turning on his heel without so much as another word or glance in Schmidt’s direction and heading over to take the blankets to his horse and begin tying them in place.

There would be plenty of time for him to rearrange his thoughts on their way to George Town, even though they seemed to have knotted up so badly that he doubted he’d ever be able to straighten them out again. Irvin was playing dirtier than Levi would ever be able to. He kept making him jump between emotions Levi had been struggling to control since he’d left boyhood behind. And whenever Levi decided he had a firm plan to follow when dealing with the man, Schmidt went and ripped it from his fingers like he hadn’t spent all night working on it. But what irked Levi the most was that, despite knowing he’d just lost this round without having the chance to enjoy his victory the previous night for more than a few hours, he didn’t feel the all too familiar sting of bitterness pool in the pit of his stomach, the way it had when Schmidt had decided he’d had enough of Levi ‘pulling stuff’ with him. He was confused, a bit nauseous but that was because he was still shaken up at seeing the knife and having it so close to his face, but not angry in the slightest.

Levi rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shed the jumble of feelings like a coat, resulting in nothing more than heated goosebumps crawling over his back. He frowned to himself, moving to get on his horse after he made sure everything was in place. There would be enough time to think and act and regret later.

Erwin had decided to build a campfire that night. After the persistent paranoia that had been following him for days now had subdued to a rational level of understanding things, he realized that he was carrying a great quantity of meat with him. Meat that had not been conserved to last them a few more days, because Erwin simply didn’t have the necessary means to do so

So what good letting his hard work go to waste? Sure, the tight claw of fear was still pulling at his insides, making him flinch and jump out of his skin at every little sound of the night, but he couldn’t walk around with rotting meat in his bag. That would only encourage the vultures to trail after them, making Erwin feel like more of a dead man than he already was.

Or maybe not. Not if he was precatious and clean before they left. He had to make sure that they were invisible, and would stay invisible for what was left of their journey.

Erwin observed, each time he watched the flames leap and hiss, the wood crackled and bent under the blazing heat. Smell of wood smoke drifted through t

he air like incense. The light turned his face a brilliant shade of blue, showering his vision in reds, oranges and blue. There was an old saying around the small town Erwin was born in. Fire in the heart sends smoke in the head. He would lie if he said that he paid any mind to what old women were preaching about when he was only a rug rat. Not that he could grasp the point of that proverb even now, at the age of thirty-seven, but he could actually feel that his head was filled with something strange and possibly dangerous.

As if the whole story wasn’t deadly enough.

Erwin unwrapped the rest of the Javelina and laid it by the fire. He was inspired enough to carry the stick he was toying with the night before, for now they were camping in an almost barren area. He plunged the sharp piece of wood into what used to be the animal’s shank, holding it inches above the fiery tongues.

God help him this was still edible. It would be more than just a ‘shame’ if it weren’t, since it was the only food they had left, and the night was far too dark for him to scamper about in hopes of finding something else they could eat. That, and there was always the possibility they wouldn’t be lucky enough to get another catch like this for a while, so they needed to make use of every last bit of it to keep their strength.

The way he saw it, things weren’t looking too good. Their food had run out quicker than expected, they had nameless, faceless men on their tails, and Hatillo was still a good way to go from here. Changing their route might have been both the best and worst decision he’d ever made. For one thing, the sudden change might have throw their pursuers of track, since not many preferred these parts of Coilha, with its rocky terrain. For another, there was the food shortage and the long way he had to keep in mind. He’d tried, and failed, to think of a shorter route all day before the kid had decided to play that stupid game of his.

Speaking of things that made his head hurt and his stomach churn, where was the boy?

Erwin turned to peek over his shoulder to where their horses were. Nothing. He groaned to himself, about to pull himself to his feet and pray the embodiment of a headache who called himself Levi hadn’t found another poison berry bush, when suddenly he heard a loud thud coming from right next to him. Erwin started, his head snapping to his side and all but expecting a bullet between his eyes. Instead, the only thing he saw next to him was the headache, pulling his legs to his knees and staring right into the fire like he wasn’t even there.

“Can I talk to you about something?” Levi said without looking away from the fire.

Erwin almost said no. But if he this damned journey did something helpful for him, was to teach him that some people just couldn’t take no for an answer. He was looking at the person who could easily make it to the top of the list.

“What is it?” he asked Levi, in a flat voice

At that, Levi turned to shoot him a glare, “I can’t tell you if you're going to act like an asshole.”

And that was exactly why Erwin was never a big fan of making conversation. Some people just couldn’t talk without the niceties being served first.

“I asked you what is it. I didn’t tell you to keep it to yourself”  
  
“Fine. Fine,” Levi sighed.

He remained silent for a long time after that, just staring at the fire with the eyes of a man who’d just been told he'd lost all his fortune. Burning ice stirred and churned in Erwin’s stomach. Whatever it was the kid had to say, it looked like it would probably keep him awake for the next few weeks, and he didn't know if he could handle that.

He sucked in a breath, intent on ending the conversation before it begun--

“I want to actually answer the question you asked me last night,” Levi breathed.

Too late.

Avoiding this conversation was about as easy as counting the ticks in a bag of stray kittens. Erwin could bet on his own mother’s soul that the boy wasn’t about to drop it any time soon, especially since he had a reputation of starting arguments in an empty house. And if a good ol’ mind twister wasn’t enough to call it a night, Erwin could actually feel the sharp spikes of an infernal headache pushing and twisting in the back of his head.

His kingdom for a glass of whiskey.

“There is nothin’ to talk about, kid.”

“There is,” Levi said, “And I want to talk about it. What are you going to lose if you let me?”

My mind, that would be one thing.

Erwin wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his bloodied shirt and turned to look at Levi. He was still holding the stick with the chunk of meat on the top, half of it slightly burnt.

“What are you going’ to win if I let you?”

“Peace of mind, sleep, and less headaches at the age of twenty?” Levi turned to fully face him.

The boy’s thin brows drew down, his entire face scrunching up, which was only amplified by the ruddy glow of the fire.

“Please,” The boy said, almost choking on the words.

You have no idea what peace of mind truly is, Junior. Erwin was close to speak his mind and ask the boy to cut it out with the choir boy act. But truth be told, he didn’t want to drag this along anymore. If counselling would make the brat quiet for the rest of the night, then counselling he was going to get.

“Fine. Then let’s talk like two men”

“Well obviously I’m not going to sprout breasts in the middle of the--” Levi bit his lip and forced out a sigh, “I didn’t mean the shit I said. About...thinking about you? I just wanted to...you know.”

For the love of God Almighty and all the religions he never had the mind or interest to understand. Could the kid just untie his tongue and speak it out already?

“To fool around with me like I am one of your jolly lads from Germany?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Levi said, “Look, it’s more twisted than you could ever imagine, so I just need you to listen without giving me a hard time.”

“I am givin’ you a hard--,” Erwin closed his mouth as quickly as he started to demand explanations. No, he was going to zip it and get through with this already.

Just a bit more and he could sleep and forget all about this stupid game.

“Go on. I am listening.”

“Right,” Levi breathed, fumbling with the sleeve of his shirt, “So I think we both know you’re not the most likable person, nor do you bother to make yourself be. That and the fact you looked like you’d just crawled out of the nearest grave, took the money I was saving for my trip, and acted like a constipated asshole whenever I was trying to be civil. So I hated you. A lot. And every night, along with my prayers, I hoped you’d, I don’t know, trip and crack your dumb, awful skull on a rock or something. Do you get where I’m going with this?”

Erwin did. So much so that the boy was telling him things he already knew. Not like it was the hardest thing on Earth to read someone who hates you like an open book. Bad energies, his late mother liked to call them.

Bullshit was a better choice of words for Erwin.

“Not even you wearin’ a plate that said ‘Schmidt is an asshole and I want him dead’ around your neck could have been more obvious, kid.” He couldn’t help the smug smile that was stretching his lips, “So you just decided to play a wild card and go for my balls, literally. That’s where you’re going with this, I see.”

“No,” Levi added hurriedly, then pursed his lips and muttered, “Kind of...It’s just that...I was just trying to tolerate you until we got to George Town, but then...then you told me to look at your shoulder, your naked shoulder, like it was nothing. And ‘ya gatta suck the venom out of it, junior,’. What kind of a fucking request is that?! I’ve never gotten anything weirder, and I’ve done charity work at a brothel.”

“That and you did all that shit,” Levi continued, “Trying to be nice or whatever it was you were doing, and it just ruined everything”.

The smile on Erwin’s lips died like a Prairie dog bitten by a black mamba. If anything, any sign of relief and awareness from his face was replaced by confusion and exasperation. Once again had the damned boy managed to catch him off guard and put him in an uncomfortable, if not terribly irritating place. What was he at with that statement anyway?

“What are you talkin’ about? I didn’t try to be nice. You helped me with the bite and I returned the favour.”

“Before that, you gave me your hat, you made sure I wouldn’t get fried under the shitty sun, you made sure I drank water after the berry fiasco. I would say you were trying to be nice,” Levi insisted.

Erwin took a long, yearning look at the cooked meat. Damn, was he hungry and barely able to keep himself on both legs. Was he really faced with the situation of having to justify himself? In front of a kid?

How did he end up in this mess again?

“I was only doin’ what I thought was right. No niceties.”

“The point is, I don’t think I was angry at you anymore. Not after all the ‘right but not nice’ things you did, and not after watching you stand half naked under the sun like some wandering adventurer or whatever the shit,” Levi paused for a minute, then added in a slightly lower, slightly less convincing voice, “I think I was angry at myself, because….”

“Because…” Erwin urged, nodding at the kid.

“Because I…” Levi let the rest of his sentence trail off in an inaudible murmur that made the cogs in Erwin’s head groan louder. Was this night ever going to end?

“Kid, I am startin’ to lose my patience. I have all this meat to take care of and yes, I am starvin’, as you could probably tell. Are you going’ to finish this or not?”

“I like you,”

“Come again?” Erwin blurted out before he could chew what Levi just told him. It was times like this when his tongue worked quicker than his mind and he was left puzzled, tired and irritated. He had been irritated for a long, long time now.

“Kid….Levi,” Erwin continued, letting the stick fall from his hand. To hell with dinner that night, he completely lost his appetite, “I swear, if you are foolin’ with me again…”

“I’m not,” Levi squeaked, his voice cracking, “I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I didn’t want to say it. I just thought maybe I’d feel better if I did. Maybe if you stopped thinking I was messing with you, I wouldn’t keep feeling the need to, you know?”

Erwin rubbed his face with both his hands, pushing his hair back and staring at the kid with desperate, wide eyes. He’ll be damned if he didn’t start growing grey hair at the temples.

That was fantastic. Absolutely amazing, wonderful, fucking terrific. He didn’t know whether to laugh at himself and tell the boy to beat it, since the last stunt with the dead relatives turned out to be a bluff for big children, or to stop pushing it and accept it as it came.

Poor choice of words.

It also didn’t help that the smoke in Erwin’s head started to grow thicker, making it hard to think rationally and do what he had to do. Sure, he had been telling himself a thousand times that he had to keep the boy in good shape so he can walk on his own legs to the gallows. Sure, it was really bizarre, if not completely stupid, to invest so much time and interest in taking care of the little brat.

It wasn’t the most pleasant thing to walk through the desert with a dead body strapped to your back, but it wasn’t impossible. Disgusting and a pain in the ass, but doable.

The itch that Erwin tried hard not to scratch and make it worse, was the fact that somewhere buried deep in his chest and mind he felt something more than sexual attraction and sympathy for the boy. Something warm and almost protective. He was a huge source of irritation and hardship, but he wasn’t the worst.

Not at all.

Erwin could have sworn that his conscience just told him to take a flying fuck at the Moon and stay there.

“Hey, look, if it makes you feel any better, since you’re being the emotionally stunted corpse that you are, I didn’t mean I like you the way a man likes his wife,” Levi spoke again, his face as startled and bug eyed as Erwin’s despite the confidence in his voice, “I meant I like you the way...a man would like a prostitute.”

Was that supposed to be flattering? Or even better, relieving? Erwin had no idea how should he feel or react at that moment. He hadn’t been compared to a prostitute before; what did others say to this anyway?

“That’s….reassurin’. I think I can see your point”

“Yeah,” The boy croaked now, all power draining from his voice, “So...you know, um, whatever I did was because I really, really like you that way. So you don’t have to feel bad about it.”

“That’s….fine. It’s okay, I get it now.” he mumbled quietly, prying his eyes off the boy.

“What do you want to...um, do about it?”

“I don’t…..” He sounded pathetic. Erwin cleared his throat and tried again, “I will think ‘bout it.”

“But it’s fine.” He added softly.

Not when you’re at work, Smithy. Not when you have a job to do and all is settled. Then it’s not fine. Not at all. Not one bit.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” Levi sighed, letting go of his shirtsleeve. He stretched his arms above his head, and faked a yawn, rising to his feet with a quick glance in Schmidt’s direction, “Well, I’m beat. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my eyes open for much longer.”

“But I’m glad we had this conversation,” He could only cringe at his own words as he turned on his heel and headed over to where they now had both their blankets spread on the grainy ground.

I’m glad we had this conversation? It sounded like something a father would say after having failed to explain the ways of life to his kids. What was wrong with him? He’d never had any trouble expressing or acting on his attraction to people before. Heck, looking for more and more challenging individuals to lure to bed was one of his favourite passtimes in Bavaria. His conversations with them were never this constipated; never so dull and tense and all in all useless. There was supposed to be some playful banter, a smirk or two, one of them offering the other a drink, and then forgetting his own name because the one he’d be screaming was theirs.

The easiest thing he could do right then was blame Schmidt for his lack of expected responses to any ace Levi pulled from his sleeve. Instead of easing up after every encounter, Schmidt clamped up. Instead of taking initiative like Levi had tried to lead him into doing, Schmidt ended the conversation with ‘I’ll think about it’. Schmidt’s mind wasn’t just hard to pry into, it was impossible, and nothing, not sincerity, not shamelessness, seemed to have made the slightest dent in its bolted iron doors.

The easiest thing to do was to blame Schmidt, because the easiest thing to Levi was to lie. But Schmidt’s dead fish face being the cause of all his misery was a lie Levi was tired of trying to repeat to himself. Because, yes, images of Schmidt’s sculpted body and golden skin were enough to make him want to gnaw his own arm off, and, yes, the man wasn’t the least confusing person Levi’d ever met -switching between hot and cold, brutal and reluctant at the drop of a hat-, but that didn’t give Levi any rational reason to be angry with him. After all, it was his choice whether or not he wanted any part in this, and Levi had only remembered that after spending an entire day riding behind the man in deafening silence, running the events of the previous days through his head and analysing each and every one. The conclusion he came to was that Schmidt probably wasn’t pushing him away because he was messing with him, but because he wasn’t comfortable with any of this. He’d made a mistake with Levi that night, and didn’t want to repeat it, which was a very difficult task since...well, Levi had made sure it would be every bit as difficult as he could make it.

He wanted to kick himself, Levi thought as he lowered himself to the ground and pulled the blanket up to his chest. He could safely say that tonight was the first night he -the exact opposite of a choir boy, having done deeds behind closed doors that could make the lewdest of harlots cringe- actually felt the bitter tinge of shame worm its way through his chest.

And it didn’t help that the man who was the walking, talking embodiment of Levi’s both homicidal thoughts and sexual fantasies was lying a few feet away from him. As still as a log, Levi couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t think one can actually tell if Schmidt was alive or not, if it wasn’t for that occasional snoring. He wasn’t moving at all. His chest didn’t rise and fall with every intake of air during his sleep.

Maybe he practiced that before he crawled out of the coffin. That actually made Levi smile.

All in all, it had been days since he genuinely smiled. Any dirty thought and mischievous plan aside.

“Kid, are you sleepin’ “?

Levi almost started at the sudden breach of silence. He stared at the golden back of Schmidt’s head, pausing for a minute to see whether or not he’d imagined the low, deep grumble of the man’s voice.

When he heard nothing, he murmured back, “Did you ask me whether or not I was sleeping?”

“Yeah. So you’re not sleepin’. That’s good” Schmidt said, raising his voice above a murmur.

“No, I guess I’m not,” Levi grumbled back, “Did you want anything?”

Another prolonged break. Then Schmidt finally spoke again.

“Yeah. I….I wanted to say that everythin’s fine, you know? I am fine with the entire thing. I don’t mind it”

Levi’s eyes widened, whatever snappy reply he’d come up with sticking to the back of his parched throat. Did he hear this right? Even if he did, his stomach shouldn’t twist inside him like it’d just won a thousand dollars. It was all the more comforting for him to know that Schmidt couldn’t see him from where he lay, facing the opposite side, because Levi could just feel heat bloom at the base of his neck, climbing up to his face. He didn’t even know whether Schmidt meant he didn’t mind what had happened, or that he wouldn’t mind it happening again.

Nevermind that. What was important was that he’d think of a good reply, just in case this meant he still had a chance of going anywhere near Schmidt without any more crude games. Failure was not an option.

Levi’s hand sneaked out from under the blankets before he had the chance to stop it, but then paused right before so much as brushing Schmidt’s back. He suppressed a sigh of relief and let his hand fall back down to the ground. Physical contact probably wasn’t the best idea at the moment.

Think, Ackerman, think.

“Would you...mind making that a bit clearer?”

Genius.

“I….well….a bit clearer? I sup’ose so.” Schmidt said without turning to him, “I mean, I was taken aback a little, you know? Caught off guard. It’s been a while since I did somethin’ more….intimate. And I thought you were pullin’ tricks on me. But I consider you honest now”

Well, this was moving along a lot better than expected.

“I am honest,” Levi said, and for once since they’d started their trip, he actually meant everything he said, “And I’m…” ‘Sorry’ wasn’t a word he would ever get used to or even want to get used to, “I hope I didn’t make you too uncomfortable. I guess it shouldn’t have been this hard for me to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“I’m just...I’ve never really been turned down before. Usually it was me doing the turning, so I thought you were playing a game with me or some shit. It’s no excuse. It’s what happened,” Levi added, then brushed the tips of his fingers against Schmidt’s back and dropped his voice to a murmur, “I couldn’t bare the thought that the man I wanted more than anyone, wasn’t really interested in me.”

“I didn’t turn you down.” Irvin added hurriedly. By the way his back tensed and his shoulders slumped, Levi understood he said that before he could stop himself, “What we did was...pleasant. Really pleasant, actually.”

“Oh,” Levi paused for a minute, then -with much reluctance- inched slightly closer to Schmidt, whispering at the base of his neck,”I thought it was very pleasant too…”

“Yeah..” he nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. Without even touching it, Levi was positively sure Irvin’s skin had turned into goose flesh. Very nice.

“I liked it.”

He gnawed on his bottom lip, the cogs in his head groaning. There was a very strong urge in his gut, and a stronger thought stewing in his mind. But he just wasn’t sure where to start...Schmidt wasn’t giving him the single, most important detail he needed to make this feel, well not right exactly, but as right as it could be for two people in their situation.

Levi frowned to himself. Rational thinking wasn’t one of his strong suits. He’d always acted on impulse and emotion. It was a wonder he’d even thought for so long in the past day without doing something about said thoughts. That wasn’t exactly something he was proud of, but it did come in handy at times. Sometimes one just had to act and then think after, because thinking before might make them miss the action forever. Now was one of those times…

He shifted upwards so his face was directly behind Irvin’s neck, so close he could feel the fine hairs at the back of it make his nose itch. Then he took his time leaving an open mouthed kiss right over the shivering, tense muscle, hoping beyond hope this wouldn’t end him up back at the starting point.

“I liked it too,” Levi whispered, sneaking his hand up Irvin’s wound up shoulder, “I have this thing for taking care of men who forget they need taking care of…”

A painfully long moment followed after. Levi’s entire body tensed up, like a live wire, his fingers stopping on Irvin’s shoulder and almost digging into the flesh.

I blew it up.

The whole world fell quiet as Irvin turned around and looked at Levi, with eyes as big and blue as the sky itself. They made Levi think of little blonde children who passed the ball behind someone’s fence and were fidgeting and asking if they can maybe have their ball back. His breath hitched when Schmidt put a hand on his shoulder and moved it lower, until it stopped on his leg for a fleeting moment. Then it was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Levi said, whilst moving his own hand to tangle with Irvin’s and carefully bring it back to his waist.

“Nothin’,” he breathed out and shook his head, those wide eyes never leaving Levi’s, “It’s nice.”

Levi sighed when he felt Irvin’s fingers curling around his hip bone.

“It is, isn’t it?” Levi’s free hand flicked stray blonde strands from Irvin’s eyes, then ran its knuckles along sharp cheekbones and a perfectly cut jaw.

Good. This was going very well so far.

Levi tilted his head up, reaching for Irvin’s lips and just barely brushing them with his own, “We can make it feel a lot nicer, if you want.”

And Levi took his reaction as a definite ‘yes’. Irvin crashed their lips together, the fingers that previously caressed the jut of his hip bone, now digging into the hollow of his bony cheeks and forcing Levi to open up for him.

It wasn’t anything gracious or gentle at all, only tongue, teeth and desperate breathing, Schmidt grabbing his face and pulling him closer.

Any sound Levi attempted to make was muffled by the smothering mouth covering his own. He wouldn't have expected someone like Irvin to know how to kiss all that well, considering the fact he didn't seem to meet people all too often, and his previous go at it was a tad too desperate to belong to someone who knew what he was doing. This, however, was different. This made him flush hot and needy, squirm under Irvin’s bruising grip on his cheeks. Before he even knew what he was doing, his nimble fingers found their way to Irvin’s shirt, clawing and grabbing as he tried to keep up with the hungry kiss. The thin, pink lips drowned him, ripped the breath from the very base of his lungs, and only allowed him short, ragged breathing through his nose to compensate.

Levi closed his eyes, running his hand up Irvin’s chest. Damn this man and his firm, warm muscle.

And then those lips were gone, leaving Levi ache for something more. He could actually feel his cock throb painfully in the inside of his pajamas when Irvin tugged at his lower lip a little too rough. The damned bastard had so much more potential than he was willing to show Levi. It didn’t help that he was staring back at him with those wide blue eyes and ridiculously red lips, all bruised from kissing like an animal.

Levi didn’t think this man could ever be gentle or take things slowly. Not like he was going to complain.

He fisted a hand through Schmidt's hair, watching him through half lidded eyes, and using his other hand to grip the man’s far larger one. He led it down his stomach, over his hip; he led it all the way down to his thigh and shifted it bit by bit towards his yet clothed, aching cock.

“Can you feel how hard I am for you, Herr?” Levi kissed along Irvin’s jaw, “I bet you're just as aching, aren't you?”

Irvin didn’t say anything. He smacked his lips a few times and pressed harder on Levi’s erection, running his thumb along the underside of it. Levi would lie if he said he wasn’t stunned by how fast had the childish, deep blue eyes turned to a stormy shade of sea glass, a predatory glint making them seem more sharp and aware. Levi felt his insides starting to coil up in a tight ball.

“Fuck,” Levi breathed.

At first he started rocking his hips against Irvin’s hand, begging for whatever little bit of attention the man was willing to give him. Yet he didn't look ready to give Levi whatever he wanted just because he’d ask for it, nicely or not. Levi recognized the look in the swimming shades of blue; he’d seen it reflected in the eyes of many a man he’d lain with -the types of men he’d liked, anyway-. It was a broken cipher that said a simple sentence that sent sparks from Levi’s mind straight down to his groin.

If you want something, earn it.

He doubted that would be too hard. Schmidt was desperate for control. And Levi was more than eager to please.

Levi pushed himself upright, not giving Schmidt a minute to react before he was on top of him, straddling his waist, fumbling with the buttons of his pants. He had to remind himself several times to be careful lest he ended up ripping anything open where they couldn't repair it. Saying it was difficult didn't cut it. It was torture. His fingers were as numb and hasty as they had been when he’d been trying to free his horse of the extra bags, except this time they actually managed to get the job done, slipping all the buttons open. Levi looked up at Schmidt, focusing his eyes on him as he leaned down to kiss over his stomach, running his hands over the planes of his body, the sharp jut of his abnormally slim waist, the dips of his abdomen.

He wanted him. He wanted every part of him.

Most of all, of course, he wanted a certain part of Schmidt inside of him. The mere thought of being able to touch that big, hard cock was enough to send Levi’s mind to another frenzy. He slipped his hand inside Schmidt’s pants, running his palm over the curve of him. His breath grew ragged when he felt it; pulsing, throbbing against him, and his eyes darted back to Schmidt’s face. He could feel them burning through their sockets.

“I want you to fuck my name out of my memory,” Levi breathed.

“Not yet,” Irvin said out of breath, his fingers now wrapping around Levi’s wrist and squeezing lightly, “I want you to do somethin’ else for me.”

Levi frowned, “What's that?”

Irvin was still watching him with those wide and wild eyes. Levi tiled his head to the side and stared at him in silence, acknowledging how his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed and spoke again with more confidence.

  
‘Why don’t you put that smart mouth to good use instead? I would really really like that.”

Levi’s blood burned in his cheeks, flushing them a deep red, and making his breath hitch audibly. He didn't know what affected him more; the growl that Irvin’s words came out in, rumbling deep from the base of his chest, or the way the gorgeous blue eyes crackled like blue fire. Whatever it was, it made his stomach twist and coil in on itself and made something warm pool into the base of it. It wasn't the first time he’d felt this way; after all, he was no stranger to this kind of pleasure, but there was something so different about it this time. Something more intense. Levi was sure that, had he been standing, he would've been brought to his knees by now.

He swallowed thickly, and gave a shaky nod, running his hand up Irvin’s cock again before leaning over to press fervent kisses along his neck and chest, working his way down to his stomach, and taking his time to properly unbutton Irvin’s pants and tug them down over his hips. He doubted he could take even half of him in without choking, but damn him if he didn't at least give it a shot. He could clearly see Irvin humming contently, dropping his head and gazing up at the starry night. Levi felt an adrenaline rush when one of Schmidt’s hand found its way to the back of his neck, stroking at the small hairs of his undercut. Did he really need a more obvious approval?

What better time to show Schmidt a thing or two?

He looked at Irvin through thick lashes as he trailed lower, leaning his head back against the man’s hand. His own cock twitched in his pants when his lips brushed over the throbbing vein leading from the slope of Irvin’s hip and down to his aching length. Levi licked and mouthed around the base, wrapping his fingers around the shaft and giving it a few long, slow strokes. He then licked a long stripe up to the tip, running his tongue along the tip and lapping up the pearls of precum that collected there, while his hand continue its work, nimble fingers going up and down wherever Levi’s tongue wasn't coating Irvin’s cock with warm wetness.

It was really a pity that the man was oversensitive, from weeks, maybe months of abstinence. Schmidt wasn’t going to last long, judging by the violent shudder that took over his body and his ragged breath, but Levi was on his knees to make sure that it was going to be a most pleasant experience, for both of them. He toyed with the head for a while, letting it rest on his lips before he decided to take it into his mouth. Lips suckling around the tip, tongue circling the tingling underside, then oh-so-gently over the sensitive slit to tease the wetness from it, Levi could toss the false modesty aside. He knew what he was doing and what was even more exciting and rather obscene, was the fact that Irvin knew that Levi knew what he was doing. An audible grunt worked like a mental lever for him, urging Levi to go deeper and push his luck into finding how much of that ridiculously big cock could he get into his mouth.

Levi breathed out a moan around Irvin’s cock, jerking him off harder and faster as he pushed him deeper in. It didn't take much for him to feel it brushing against the back of his throat, drawing out a low, choked sound from him. His eyes never left Irvin’s face, watching how his lips parted as he lost himself deeper and deeper into the growing sensations. Levi made it a point to twirl his tongue around the shaft, wrapping his fingers of one hand around whatever he couldn't fit into his mouth, and those of the other around one of Irvin’s hips. When his throat got used to the new intrusion, Levi began moving his mouth up and down, following the rhythm of his hand. He started out slowly at first, taking his time twirling his tongue around the shaft, swallowing around it whenever he dipped in lower, and making sure every lewd, wet sound that came out of this reached Irvin’s ears loud and clear. He wanted him grappling at the sandy ground by the time he wanted to come.

Irvin’s groans spilled into the stifling air. Looking up, Levi could see him strung like a bow, face and neck flushed and his free hand closing into a tight fist. It seemed like the last of his control was ripped away when he pushed Levi’s head even deeper, so he could hold still and not jerk his hips upwards. Which really was for the best, since Levi could feel his throat sore and aching with the hard task of tightening around Schmidt’s cock. He really didn’t need to be choked with what was left of it.

Irvin lifted his head, gaze fixed blindly and unwaveringly on Levi, trying to find his eyes in the darkness and read his expression. He mumbled something deep and incoherent, and Levi would grin if he wasn’t stuffed with cock at the moment. But ‘close’ and ‘almost there’ were crystal clear.

Levi pulled himself off of irvin, resting his lips on the tip of his cock then running them back and forth along the slit till they were smeared with precum. He then made a show of licking it off, catching his lower lip between his teeth and looking up at Irvin through thick, black lashes as his hand continued giving him slow strokes.

“Where do you want to cum, kommandant?” Levi murmured, “In or out?”

He couldn’t help an ear-to-ear grin when Irvin’s face turned an even darker shade of red. His eyes narrowed for a second, staring back at Levi as if he was about to jump at him and slit his throat. On a second thought, that wasn’t entirely impossible, with Schmidt’s record of being creepy and more or less deranged. But luckily for Levi, there wasn’t any death threat in those blue eyes. What Irvin was trying to transmit was something even more primal that the instinct to kill; something that shouldn’t be put into words, but Levi couldn’t deny that he was dying to hear what Schmidt had to say. Take it or leave it, he gave him two options that were equally satisfying, if not incredibly generous, one could say.

But who would have thought that a blowjob here and there could do wonders on a grumpy, sinister wanderer and make him speak his mind? Levi made a mental note to give himself a reward after all the humdrum came to an end.

“Don’t talk like a harlot. I thought you liked havin’ a bit of control every now and then.”

There was no bite in Schmidt’s words. Only an eerie inflection that made him look both sleepy and comfortable.

Levi couldn’t help but roll his eyes and utter a quiet, “Your cock seems to like it.”

He didn’t give Schmidt a chance to answer, lest he said something that ruined the mood entirely, and took him back into his mouth instead. Except this time he didn’t start gradually, but closed his eyes and kept going till his lips stretched wide around the shaft, and his throat forced a strangled choke out of them when they just couldn’t take another inch. Levi kept one hand around what he couldn’t take in of Irvin’s cock, and moved the other to his own, palming it through the thin cotton of his pants. He moved at a steady rhythm, pumping him in and out. The flat of his tongue pressed against the underside where it weighed on Levi’s jaws, then covered the tip in kitten licks and a litany of lewd, sopping sounds.

Schmidt might not want him to talk like a harlot, but Levi would be damned if the man didn’t enjoy seeing him act like one; batting his eyelashes at him whenever he tended to the flushed tip, spilling moans around his cock where it spilled precum on his lips, and always, always, making sure his lips were wet, red, and stretched obscenely thin around him.

And if Schmidt wasn’t enjoying the image, then Levi certainly was, and he supposed, in the end, that was half of all that mattered.

All good things come to an end, said the little voice in his head, almost sulking. Levi felt Irvin’s fingers grabbing the back of his head before he felt his cock twitch and his entire body going stiff. Just like their previous intimate encounter, Schmidt was silent as he came into his mouth, his mouth hanging open and his head dropping between his shoulder blades, staring at the sky like it was about to crumble and fall on top of him.

Levi didn’t pull away until he felt Schmidt's final tremors died down, swallowing what he could and licking the rest off of his lips when he finally pulled away and tumbled onto his back next to the panting man. His hand never left his yet clothed cock, slipping inside his pants to finish himself off with quick, rough strokes.

He’d never really been one for drawn out romantic encounters, slow and sensual touches, and whispered loving nonsense. If he’d wanted that, he could’ve gotten himself a partner. Fuck knew he could have saddled himself with one if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t, because one, single, repetitive partner wouldn’t be able to give him the rush of seeing different eyes every night in a dark lit room, of tasting different lips and drink in the stories they told of where they’d been, where they’d go. And a partner would kiss him because he loved him, all tender and gentle and taking his sweet, sweet time ‘exploring’ as if Levi were some forbidden land or whatever the fuck it was some amorous idiot had told him once, before Levi’d froze and told him to beat it before he kicked him to that land instead.

If there was one thing he was thankful for on this godforsaken trip, it was that Schmidt seemed to be just his type, proof being that he seemed more content about having had his own release than concerned about helping Levi through his. Patience, Levi told himself, gritting his jaw and canting his hips into his hand as the hot fist in his stomach tightened. All Schmidt needed was a bit of patience, and he’d be just as animalistic as Levi wanted him to be.

“Say, Irvin,” Levi panted, barely keeping his eyes open, “You usually fuck boys or am I just really lucky?”

“I did it before. Once.” Came Irvin’s breathless reply.

“Was he young?” a quiet moan slipped past Levi’s lips before he could stop it, “Pretty?”

“Old enough,” Irvin said, “But not as pretty as you.”

Levi felt his cock twitch in his hand at what he guessed was a compliment. It wasn’t as if Schmidt was the first man to tell him that. He’s often felt those word breathed against the skin of his neck as searing as a branding iron. But it was just so thrilling -and perhaps a little crude- to be told he’d bested someone at this.

“Was he” Levi’s breath hitched as he ran his thumb back and forth over his slit, “Was he as good as me?”

A long drawn-out silence followed next. Levi could heard Schmidt pulling himself back in his pants, along with some shifting and turning.

Seconds later, Irvin’s hand was over his own.

“No, I don’t think so. You’re way ahead of him. Far prettier than him too.” His voice came out as a low grunt, right next to Levi’s ear.

“Fuck,” Levi whimpered, bucking his hips harder against his hand and the far larger one covering it. He was so close. So fucking close. Irvin could so much as breathe on him a few times and he’d end up shooting over his stomach. “Pretty how...tell me.”

“A boy shouldn’t have red lips like yours. I am still blamin’ you for movin’ around like that, with your sleeves rolled up and white flesh showin’. It’s your fault for looking like that, Levi.”

Levi could have sworn Schmidt just growled like a hungry animal in his ear. He saw stars in his peripherals when he bit and nibbled at the shell of his ear.

“Shit, Irvin,” Levi barely managed before a loud moan broke past him, drowning out both his and Schmidt’s ragged breathing as he came, tense, shuddering, and almost choking on his own breath.It was as though he were drowning on dry land, his vision blurring, breath twisting in his lungs, and head dull and throbbing with white thoughts. He was grappling for something, anything to keep him anchored to consciousness, and ended up gripping Schmidt's hand in a knuckle bleaching grip as he waited for his body to still.

It felt like forever before his muscles eased up and let him slump back onto the ground. Levi’s hand never left Schmidt’s as his chest heaved with uneven gasps and pants and his eyes focusing on nothing in particular in the vast, star freckled sky above them.

It felt like long, long moments until Irvin broke the silence, clearing his throat in a not-so-attractive way. Oh, joy.

“We should...we should be going’ to sleep, huh?”  
  
“Yeah,” Levi ran his free hand through his hair and sighed, “Yeah, we should.”

He turned his head to the side to look at Schmidt, even though all he could make out was the faint outline of his face and the twinkling of his eyes in the blinding darkness. It was a pity, really. Because he couldn’t really tell whether or not the man was uncomfortable or content or regretful or anything. And Levi wanted more than anything to see, to get some sort of hint at whether or not he could, or should, push for something more in the coming days.

Maybe even in the morning…

Levi ran his thumb over Irvin’s knuckles, then brought them to his lips and murmured against them, “Did you really like it?”

“Yes,” Irvin answered immediately, his hand squeezing Levi’s fingers, knuckles moving under his lips, “I liked it a lot. It was something wonderful.”

That should be confirmation enough.

Levi smiled against Irvin’s fingers, closing his lips around them and nibbling on one, “I’m glad I could help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments are greatly appreciated. We love hearing what you think!


End file.
